Orange Juice!
by xTheo
Summary: CRACKFIC. Shinigami Hinata, don't ask how we got to this point but she's ready to fight and help her beloved. This entire story was a result of my insomnia. Update Sunday 5th feb starts at chap. 3 :)
1. Shinigami Hinata

The only thing stronger than a demon is a death-god.

She's gone insane!

"Hinata no! Dont... holy shit..."

He was on the ground impaled with several long, metal spears. While Hinata had been receiving the beating of her lifetime seconds ago, her bloody body disappeared. He looked up to see her in the air.

Only she didn't look the same. A new jutsu? Naruto was beyond the point of reason in this war, all he could do was pray she knew what she was doing.

"Taste my chakra bullets bitch!" Hinata yelled as her 200-piece unloaded on the ginger-haired maniac below. Her wing was bloody on one side, causing her flight-path to spiral down like a cork-screw.

"Aah, fuck it..." she stated aloud, shrugging after a split-second moment of contemplation. She dove onto the carrot-top asshole maliciously.

"What is this madness?" Pain exclaimed, trying his best to pry the wild creature off his back.

Black clothing and huge black wings, completely black orbs save for a thin line of bright red and broken blood-vessels made up her eyes. The hyuuga gave Pain a sharp, toothy grin before biting into the man's crotch.

"What the fuck!" Pain really felt true pain at that moment, just as Hinata had hoped.

It didn't last long. She was a shinigami, Pain was a demon. He had her beat when it came to power, although she had immortality in this form.

So... in a way she was more powerful. But that wasn't going to save anyone else. She was blasted off of Pain, who stuck a few spears in her limbs.

"Jesus fucking Christ, you made me holy!"

Hinata laughed aloud, to the weirded out looks of both Pain and Naruto.

'What is she saying? weird girl...'

"I can hear both of your guy's thoughts. Fuck you, I'm not weird! I've just done a bit of extra-dimensional travel is all."

'Hmmm...'

"Hmm yourselves!"

Hinata turned her bloody face to Naruto and smiled.

"Hey Naruto-kun?"

"What's up Hinata-chan"

"If we don't see eachother again, just so you know I had a crush on you since we were kids and... well I guess, I love you."

"WHAT!"

The blonde gawked at her. Was he really that blind/dense? He'd never met this tough girl before and he'd never noticed she was into him. Maybe this wasn't really Hinata...

"Dude it's really me, Hinata Hyuuga. Don't doubt it."

"Well... hell, I've got some thinking to do later..."

"This is cute and all, but I'll just be getting back to killing you now..."

Pain stabbed a pole deep into Hinata's abdomen, causing Naruto to cry out in a fit of guttural rage.

"Retard, you can't kill a shinigami!" Hinata rolled her eyes but continued to lay there, unable to get free.

Not that it mattered, Naruto was going beast-mode now, she couldn't help savouring the dark-red chakra that washed over her and everything in the immediate vicinity.

"Yeah Naruto, tear his ass up and fuck him bloody!"

That came out wrong. No matter, Kurama was out now and he chuckled at the mental image of a beaten Pain as his gagged sex-slave.

"I like you girl, you just beat the kit on my list of humans not to destroy."

"Thank you Kurama-sama. I'm a shinigami-human FYI. Also, your chakra makes me really fucking hot, that's potent shit..."

"Aged over a millenium ya know, it'll be like the best wine you ever tasted... if you want to taste."

"I don't drink alcohol, I'm 16. Also I'm not into freaky demon sex. But thanks for whatever you were offering..."

"No problem."

Could you believe they were having that conversation while Kurama/Naruto was sixty-foot tall and wrestling with an enlarged Pain. Red chakra clashed with black over and over, and Hinata lay back with a relaxed face.

They were at it for hours it seemed, because now the sun was coming up and shouts in the distance no longer came.

But the fighting stopped, and it seemed Kurama/Naruto were the winners.

VICTORY! Adrenaline rushed through her system at the thought of said sucessful outcome.

She pried the poles off her hands and abdomen.

"That sucked..."

The ones on her feet and wings hurt the most. But when they were off they healed quickly.

"Hinata-chan, it's no wonder I've never seen you in the hospital once!"

"Hey Sakura-chan" Hinata kept her mouth closed, not wanting to scare the girl any more than necessary.

The eyes and all-black get-up were enough, her folded wings looked like a funny blanket right now. But the huge toothy gash of a mouth, like that creepy fish thing that had a little light to lure its smaller same-species pray.

Yeah, her shinigami smile was the worst part.

"You're not freaked out?"

"Nah, I've read about you shinigami. Nuff said, I'm open to this..."

"Cool beans."

Sakura helped her up and they walked back to the village.

There were a lot of dead people. Hinata shrugged them off, she'd see them later, while Sakura was too busy healing to grieve. They respectfully maintained a sorrowful expression while contributing in every way they could to fixing the mess though.

While her heart soared when Naruto returned and got a hero's welcome, she just waved from the back of the crowd before running off.

She was going to be busy for a while guiding souls to the world beyond death.

"Hey wait up!"

Naruto yelled out to Hinata but she kept running. It seemed she paid no mind to him, lost in her own thoughts.

"Hinata!"

He probably shouldn't have just left the villagers like that, they'd be worried. No matter, he'd go back soon.

"Damn it, kage bushin!"

Two more Naruto's appeared, leaping ahead of the real version. This chase was getting ridiculous, he needed to stop her before she turned into that flying thing he saw her as during the battle and flew off.

Clone #1 grabbed #2's wrist and ankle and began spinning like a top. Upon release Clone #2 launched ahead fifty feet in barely a second.

Hinata was oblivious to everything. That was until a pair of sandaled feet landed on her back, pushing her to scrape along the ground while the clone stood over her, grinning.

"Shit, sorry Hinata!"

Naruto shoved his clone off the girl guiltily, kneeling down to check her for injuries. He had meant for the clone to land in front of her, not on top of her.

"No harm done, but I'm pretty annoyed right now..." The gritted teeth and clenched fists warned him to step back.

"I'll never hit you Naruto-kun, well, not unless you tell me to during sparring or something..."

"Oh, cool..." He sighed in relief and pulled her to her feet. She sensed he had something he wanted to talk about. There were plenty of things after all, who died, who survived, what happened surface-level while he was fighting Pain in demon-fox mode, the whole shinigami business...

"I just wanted to ask, did you really mean what you said about liking me for all those years?"

Oh. She wasn't expecting that.

"Well... uuuhhh... yes!" The last bit came out as more of a squeak, making her blush.

"I know you're into Sakura, so don't worry. I just wanted to say it in case you died..."

"You mean in case either of us died?"

"No. I'm shinigami, we don't die."

Shinigami. Naruto frowned, immediately remembering everything he could about the word. His father had used a powerful jutsu to seal the kyuubi inside him as a baby, the reprecussion being a shinigami claimed his soul and extra life-span.

Shinigami were death-gods charged with the task of guiding souls to the afterlife, known to have inhumane powers. He shivered with goosebumps, for some reason the idea that Hinata had the power of a shinigami excited him. There would be time to question her further on this matter later.

"Really? so I went beast-mode for nothing..."

"What are you talking about! You did it to save the village."

His eyes widened in realisation. That's right, although he'd initially lost control from her supposed death, his resulting power was what defeated Pain.

"I guess I did..."

They were walking along together, before stopping on a bridge. Hinata leaned backwards against it coolly, tilting her head back as Naruto watched her.

"What is it?" she asked, pale eyes sliding over to meet his.

"Nothing! I mean... you look really pretty right now."

Her lavender jacket was fully unzipped, revealing her form fitting mesh top and black tank-top over it. Her hair was tied back in a messy bun but a lot of it had slipped out during their scuffle.

"Thanks, you're looking surprisingly good having just won a battle against a deadly shinobi."

He wore his black and orange jumpsuit, the orange jacket was unzipped like hers and revealed a similar mesh shirt, while his blond spikes hung down over his forehead with his headband tucked in his pocket.

"Naruto-kun, you're leaving soon right?"

"Yeah, tomorrow Jiraiya-sensei's taking me to meet another jinchuriki, he'll teach me to control my own demon."

'Hmm, better not mention my little interactions with Kurama...' Hinata thought, nodding happily.

"Would you mind holding off on responding to my confession? I don't think you should distract yourself. You've got more important stuff to think about right now, our fight against the Akatsuki isn't over yet..."

"Oh, yeah sure... You're right, we can save this for after Madara's dead and I learn to control the kyuubi."

"Exactly."

Hinata patted his shoulder. For a moment they held gazes, both of their cheeks blushing lightly.

Then Hinata took a step back, activating her shinigami-mode.

"I have a lot of things to do, I hope I get to see you later Naruto-kun."

"I hope I see you before I leave. Bye!"

He waved to the girl as she flew off, sighing softly.

She didn't say goodbye to him. Sakura and the rest of the Konoha 12, Kakashi-sensei and a heavily injured Tsunade baa-chan were gathered to say goodbye, but Hinata was nowhere in sight.

Though it pained him, they'd said all they needed to yesterday anyway.

"I'll come back even stronger so I can protect the village, believe it!"

A year passed by really slowly. Through all the torturous training, Naruto pulled through by constantly reminding himself who he was doing all this for. The people who mattered, Sasuke, Sakura, his senseis, his parents, Teuchi and Ayame, his friends...

Hinata.

'How is the little Hyuuga vixen?' Kurama asked, grinning maniacally from behind his prison cell. Naruto scoffed at him, trying to focus on his meditation.

'I asked you a question Kit'

'So?'

'Answer it...'

'How would I know! I've been here for the last whatever time, a year I think... why do you care anyway? You've never met!'

'Oh but we have, when you last called upon my power.'

'WHAT! Did you touch her you creepy son of a bitch?'

'Wish I could've.'

'You'd wish you were dead if you had!'

'Okay calm your shit down, I just talked to your mate for a few seconds. No harm done...'

'Hmph. What did you talk about? And don't call her my mate...'

'You know you like how it sounds. How about girlfriend?'

'She's not that either. Ugh you've completely ruined my meditation!'

'Good. Trivial matters at the time, but just so you know she likes power, I mean she reeeaaallly likes power'

Kurama's grin widened. Naruto wanted nothing more than to knock his big teeth out.

'Lucky you're freaky powerful even without me around, you carry some dope chakra mix thanks to your parents.'

'... thanks?...'

"Hey kid! Get your ass up, we're going to Myobuku."

Jiraiya pulled him out of his mind into reality.

"What for? Not that I don't wanna see gamabunta or anything but-"

"You're gonna learn sage-mode. It's a power-up technique, with it you can harness the natural energy all around us. It's powerful, let's just say that."

"Really? Awesome!"

Another few months were spent on the beautiful Mt Myobuku. Naruto sat alongside Gamabunta the toad king. After staring into the abyss of an oily pond for hours, he'd learnt the basics of what needed to be done.

The actual doing was the hard work.

"I don't know if you'll be able to master this in time kid..." Gamabunta shook his head worryingly. "You need more time than what you have."

"And how much time do I have?"

"Well Madara's just attacked your village."

The blonde shinobi jumped up, shocked.

"Shit, take me back Gama!"

"Hang on kid, I'll drop you off in the battlefield but we need to get Jiraiya."

The toad-king gave a massive croak, gathering enough energy to summon the sennin. When the white-haired toad sage arrived, he swallowed the two and jumped off into their world.

Everything had kicked off around Konoha. It was a full blown shinobi war, bigger than the Pain invasion. As soon as they arrived Jiraiya headed for the hospital, he needed to make sure Tsunade was okay. Naruto made a run for the centre of the battlefield, where there was a standoff.

There were the 4 remaining Akatsuki members, Konan, Itachi, Hidan, and Madara who was controlling Obito's re-animated 10-tailed beast corpse. Aside from Sasuke, who fought Itachi on his own, the rookie 12 were fighting one member each while their sensei's cleared weaker enemies by the dozen.

Team Asuma were fighting Konan, Team Gai were fighting Hidan and Team Kurenai were fighting Obito. Sakura was a pink blur who moved between the members and healed them, taking out whatever enemies she could imbetween.

Their tactics seemed to be working, everyone except Obito/Madara was down now.

"Hey little brother, just so you know I always loved you..."

They were the last words Sasuke heard before he dug his kunai deep into Itachi's already bleeding neck. He leaned over the older Uchiha, holding back the tears.

While fighting, the sorry story of his clan's demise was told. He didn't know what to hate now. Should he get revenge on the village who forced Itachi to commit such heinous acts?

Or maybe he should kill the nine-tailed demon, for simply existing he gave the Uchiha power to even think of overthrowing the Hokage.

Either way he was out for blood. 'To hell with reason!' Sasuke thought as he started killing everyone in his immediate area. Enemy or ally, he just didn't give a fuck anymore.

"Kiba, don't fucking do that!"

Too late. Hinata groaned, watching the Inuzuka dive-bomb onto the back of Obito's inky-black chakra tentacles. He was immediately spit out with most of his clothing charred.

A badly singed Akamaru lay by his side, whining helplessly. Luckily

Shino and Sakura came to their rescue, scooping them up after finishing their own battles, Hinata sensed they would be heading for the underground bunkers. They'd done their part on the battlefield and done it well.

The last big enemy was Madara controlling Obito, and only one blonde jinchuriki of Konoha would have enough power to tip the odds of winning in their favour.

Kakashi met up with Kurenai, who attempted to prop up the heavily bleeding Asuma. Even though he was dying, a cigarette was shakily being lit between chapped lips with bloody fingers.

He was going to die looking cool, for sure.

"A-asuma... your wound wont close!"

Kurenai was losing her shit, trying to keep her tears in as she shakily cauterised the wound.

"Kurenai, I'm sorry I couldn't be there for little Hitori..." He whispered, his blood-filled throat choking out the words with a thin stream of smoke.

"I love you..."

"No, NOOOO!" She pushed him against the tree when he slumped forward, begging him not to die. Kakashi watched silently as the woman let out her woes on the tree he leaned on, punching it with her already-bandaged fists so hard cracking noises were made.

After that and a five-minute crying fit, Kakashi pulled her up to her feet.

"Take Asuma's body to the bunker Kurenai-san, I know it's hard but you have to..."

He allowed the woman to lean into his arms and cry on his chest, looking off into the distance as he was reminded of his own sad past.

His teammate and first love Rin had died in his own arms, and his other teammate Tobi was now the controlled zombie-shinobi Obito, whose corpse Madara had needed to host the ten-tailed demon because Tobi had unlocked the rinnengan before his own death which was the most powerful bloodline known to man.

It was so powerful it could control demons. The rinnengan was what Madara had first used to control Kyuubi to attack the hidden-leaf village in the first place.

Kakashi watched Kurenai leave with a dead Asuma, before heading off to Obito.

He was going to face his teammate for the last time.

Naruto arrived on the scene, squinting slightly at the haze of potent mixed chakras that laced the air. Black swirled through purple and greens, rising high up and arching over to create a dome of sorts.

"So the Yondaime's son has arrived. Time to see who the prophetic peace-bringer really is..."

Before Naruto could scoff at him derisively a flash of dark energy beat him to it. Madara was kicked in the face and knocked to the side by none other than Hinata, shinigami-mode active.

"Go shove that prophecy up your ass creep!" She immediately jumped back fifty metres, landing next to Naruto. Grinning widely, she gave him a thumbs up.

"Naruto-kun, it's been a while. Nice eyes dude!"

"Thanks, same to you..."

His glowing completely yellow orbs with vertical black slits locked onto the pitch black orbs with nothing more than a thin red ring and bloody looking spots.

They were both looking into what was each of their worst nightmares, so why couldn't they stop giggling?

"That natural energy around you feels pretty sweet Naruto-kun, kick his ass down here while I go for aerial attacks."

"Alright, give it all you've got Hinata!"

"I'll make sure you don't die..."

"These are some pretty cocky kids..." Madara muttered, looking at the huge grins plastered across their faces and wanting nothing more than to personally wipe them off the two. The silver-haired jonin had joined the battle below, engaging in combat with his puppet alongside Naruto.

Meanwhile the hyuuga was flying, yes, fucking flying! If it was a new jutsu, Madara would pry the knowledge of it from her cadaver once he was victorious. But the little bird was quick, dodging all tentacles that lashed out at her and slashing at them with her kunai in return.

She was sending her chakra down every time they made contact and Madara felt bursts of pain followed by numbness. Something to do with the Hyuuga jyuken attacks, fuck.

Kakashi watched Hinata attacking Madara with interest. Since when did the Hyuuga have that sort of jutsu? He couldn't even feel the power she should be emitting, though it was pretty obvious she was powerful.

Thanks to her continued distracting Obito was twitching weirdly, unable to battle properly. This small lapse in skill made it easy for Naruto's clones to ram him while Kakashi performed an earth-jutsu to restrain him. It seemed Obito was unconscious.

"Yo sensei, we made an awesome team!" real Naruto jumped up and down excitedly, sage-mode off and shadow-clones expelled.

"I guess we did, just like old times eh?"

"Yeah, only I could kick your ass now, and you actually showed up on time and shared the load..."

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "You'll beat me in your dreams squirt, now help me-NO!"

He'd made a fatal mistake. Naruto couldn't even reply as a hand was suddenly placed over his eyes.

"Don't look Naruto, the rinnengan will... hypnosis..."

The silver-haired jounin was gazing into the open rinnengan eyes of his former teammate, under it's spell.

'Keep your eyes closed Kit!'

'Kurama? Why are you here?'

'That puppet opened his eyes and put the copy-ninja in a powerful genjutsu'

'Will he be able to get out of it?'

'I don't know, but if you go under he'll take control of me and we're fucked. Go into sage-mode, you won't be affected then.'

'That sneaky... grrrrraaahh! Okay, thanks fox.'

He re-opened his eyes- once again yellow and slitted- and looked around. Obito was still contained but Kakashi sat in front of him, dazed. He growled again, knowing there was nothing he could do except summon a toad to carry Kakashi to safety.

"MOTHER FUCKER!" Hinata yelled at the top of her lungs, not caring who heard. The tentacles had grabbed onto her wings and were pulling them apart. The pain was excruciating, blinding, her shoulders were ripping apart with the force.

But he dropped her, broken, mangled wings and bloody back, to crumple on the ground. She was too weak to move, such damage would take a while to heal, even with her god-like powers.

A hail of black chakra-infused shuriken rained down on her. She willed herself to face it, for death was nothing to a death-goddess.

But nothing hit her. Hinata opened her eyes and met a familiar back with long brown hair, limbs splayed out in front of her. The sharingan knocked him back until his head fell at her feet, three shuriken embedded in his forehead right over the cursed caged-bird seal.

"FUCK NEJI!" She'd never screamed so loud in her life, tearing the ninja-stars from his seal and attempting to heal the forehead wound. Despite the fifteen others littering his body, she had to heal the ones that hit the seal first.

When tampered with, even slightly, it set off like a bomb and started imploding the brain and eyes, before moving down the body and turning the seal-wielders insides to mush. That was why Neji was twitching so badly, even 18 shuriken would never be enough to make Neji flinch.

The seal however, no-one could tough it out without reacting.

Blood tears ran down his eyes as he worked a hand up to cup his cousins cheek.

"Hinata-sama, forgive... me..."

No matter how much she tried it was useless. The twitching was so violent he'd flung several shuriken out himself.

She eventually moved back, eyes finally filling with tears that she refused to shed.

She would do so later, after she helped Naruto kill Madara and end all of this bullshit for good.

Naruto glanced to the side for a moment, still caught up in his attacking Madara.

What he saw almost made him give up.

A shaking, broken-winged Hinata stood over her obviously dead cousin, if the stillness, embedded weapons and bloody mass on the ground could even be considered Neji.

Memories of the boy who once thought fate couldn't be changed, only to have his own changed flew through his head. Naruto had enlightened him and earned his friendship in the process.

All for nought apparently. Madara was going to pay very, very dearly for this.

A blur jumped through the forest, aiming for the biggest monster in the field which just happened to be Madara. Sharingan eyes activated, a sword in each hand, Sasuke quickly surveyed the scene.

It seemed Madara was on his last legs, the sage-mode former teammate of his was doing a number on him while some girl with broken wings rammed at him from the other side.

While the winged girl in black didn't emit anything, Sasuke admired Naruto's aura, his power felt incredible to the Uchiha's senses.

He would make a worthy opponent when Madara was out of the way.

He set his swords down for a second and gathered a ball of lightning in each hand, concentrating the energy as much as possible. Finally he flung them towards the ten-tailed demon Obito, who screamed so loudly it caught Naruto's attention.

Sage-eyes turned to see the Uchiha, before grinning widely. 'He's on my side... for now.'

It was enough to give Naruto hope, that and the fact that the three of them were clearly beating Madara/Obito.

The ten-tailed demon was thrashing around in his earth-prison, the tails attempting to lash out and grab whatever they could. Madara had resorted to hand-to hand combat, although the black aura surrounding him was still fierce.

When he could aim a decent shot however, Hinata would knock into him and he'd miss Naruto by inches, who would then attack him without hindrance. It felt like hours had passed of tag-teaming Madara while Sasuke reduced the demon below to a puddle of black, oozing liquid.

Finally, Madara fell to his knees and admitted defeat, not even bothering to look up at the concentrated balls of yellow, black and purple chakra raining down on him.

He felt his head implode upon impact, then that peace he'd sought for most of his life washed over him.

So this is what was meant to happen.

Hinata heaved in and out beside the other two, heavily injured. She didn't have to look to know it was Naruto and Sasuke. It seemed she was forgotten as the two best-friends and rivals eyed eachother, standing tall and quite a distance apart.

Sasuke brought his hands up and performed a series of complicated signs. It was probably the longest sequence in existence, but once done they immediately saw the sky open up.

A fearsome being with long white hair, painted skin and a pale dress descended upon them. Hinata gulped, freightened of this familiar being.

It was Kami herself, regal and imposing. The god of gods, her being here meant what happened next would be very, very important to the universe.

"Sasuke Uchiha, Naruto Uzumaki, you were destined to fight and so the time has come."

Her blank red eyes flickered between the two, before she grabbed each of their shoulders and pulled them back up into another dimension.

That was the last Hinata saw of them. She couldn't follow, wouldn't in fact. The need to prove themselves to eachother had been engraved so deeply into Naruto and Sasuke that this moment was inevitable.

They would fight before the gods, and the outcome of said battle was a matter left to them and them alone.

So the war was won by Konoha and the shinobi alliance. But was it really a victory? When thousands of their shinobi were killed in the process, people the villages had held dear to their chests, now lined up neatly in freshly dug graves in Konoha and the other villages.

Hinata opened the portal from the underworld to the living, sighing softly. She hadn't been back to Konoha's living world for almost a year now. It couldn't be helped, the massive fluctuation of souls that needed transporting, and she could only drag so many at a time.

She'd gone incognito, as completely invisible to the living as they were to her. And she roamed the foggy imbetween world, a shining remimder to the lost souls that they didn't belong there.

She found Asuma clinging desperately to Kurenai's memory, willing himself to be felt by her living flesh. He had little resistance with leaving, but couldn't help the single tear that fell seeing the swelling stomach of his lover one last time before leaving.

He was going to see his father, mother and brother, and eventually Kurenai and their child Hitori would join him.

Neji was nothing but glad to see her. He'd been roaming the battlefield looking for her body, after checking the village and coming up short. He was eager to see his father again, and walked hand-in-hand to the afterlife with Hinata.

There were many other shinobi that she'd connected with briefly. Most of her friend's parents, Tsume Inuzuka and Shibi Aburame, Shikaku Nara, Choza Akimichi, Inoichi Yamanaka and Aoi Haruno. They all talked to her at some point.

For anyone else talking to thousands of dead spirits would be heart-breaking. Hinata found it comforting, especially when in the bright-white light that was the afterworld, two spirits materialised in front of her that she'd never expected to meet ever.

Dark blue and Light blue eyes locked onto the shinigami, taking in her appearance. Black longsleeved shirt and leggings caked in blood, bare feet scarred and freshly cut up while her hands were bandaged from knuckles to elbow.

Her head hung down, letting the completely white strands fall over her face to cover the haunted black and red shinigami eyes and toothy gash of a mouth. Behind her a single, tattered wing sat beside a large tuft of mangled feather and bloody bone. One wing had snapped off during the fight with Madara, and she hadn't willed it to grow back.

Hinata was suffering under the pain and misery of those who died, she was going insane again.

"Minato, how do we help her?"

Kushina's grip around her husband's left arm tightened, watching the girl shuffle over and release the pouch where she kept the souls. They floated in the air, yellow orbs of light, before dispensing out to find and connect with this new world.

"The gods have not been kind to her, she is the last shinigami in existence to our former world." Minato stated such, moving forward to touch the girl.

Hinata looked up slowly, meeting a pair of light-blue eyes so familiar she felt lost.

"N-naruto-kun?"

A small smile, the man put a hand on her shoulder and brought her to the woman standing behind him. They were both tall, Hinata's head only reached the mouth of the older woman with beautiful red hair that hung below her waist and large, expressive dark-blue eyes full of warmth and a hint of mischief.

The man had Naruto's light-blue coloured eyes and blonde hair, long and wild. She knew who these two souls must have belonged to. Naruto's parents, Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki.

"Hello there Hinata-san" Kushina bowed to her politely. She stood there speechless, Minato noticed she seemed ready to faint and pushed her to sit down, as he did too. While they crossed their legs Kushina sat gracefully, legs sideways.

"It's nice to meet you, honourable parents of Naruto-kun..."

Hinata finally remembered her manners and was going to formally bow, but Kushina giggled and stopped her with a hand to her wrist.

"No need to be so formal Hinata, we've always been pretty laidback in our life." Minato held up a hand before uncrossing his legs and stretching them before him, leaning back on his elbows. Kushina laughed at his sigh of relief and grabbed Hinata's hand.

"You know, we've seen everything that happened down there, and we wanted to thank you."

"What for?"

"For standing by our son's side. Even as children you kept an eye on him didn't you? Leaving bags of food on his balcony and leading him to safety when the mobs attacked."

Hinata would have blushed if her dead skin allowed it. "I just never understood why he was so mistreated back then. I guess you're welcome though."

"Hey Hinata? Do you think you could change to human form? Your get-up right now kinda scares the buhjeezus out of me."

Kushina punched him in the shoulder and he let out a howl in pain. "Quit being a scaredy cat!" Her long red hair flaired up like a thousand snakes, scaring the both of them.

"Please Kushina-san don't hurt him, it's okay I can transform!" Hinata disappeared in a poof of smoke and came back in human-form. Both parent's turned back to her in surprise, before smiling warmly.

"Wow, my son is a lucky young man to have a knock-out like you his age around... OWWW!"

Kushina hit her gawking husband again, but completely agreed. This long indigo-haired beauty with huge lavender eyes, smooth milky skin and curvaceous body beneath a simple lavender kimono was something all men would want.

She paid the comments no mind, instead giggling at the antics between the two. Kushina was very bipolar when it came to her husband, although he seemed to enjoy making her angry.


	2. Triumphant Return, let's party!

Are all couples supposed to act this way?

"We actually wanted to meet our son's future wife!"

That made her want to faint again.

"Well, I did. He's just here to be annoying."

Kushina glowered at her husband who smiled like a cute kitten.

"F-future w-wife?"

"Yeah! Listen, you'd be perfect to marry Naruto, you balance him out by being quiet and gentle where he's loud and rough, sorry for that too, those traits run in my family..."

Hinata gulped at the fiery red-heads declaration as one of her fists raised high in the air.

"I once told him he should find a girl just like me, but later realised it probably wouldn't work if they were always butting heads and never backing down. Minato is a pushover who takes hits well, which is why we worked."

"Hey I'm not-mmph!"

Kushina clamped a hand over her husband's mouth.

"Ummm, I thought he still had feelings for Sakura-chan, so I... stopped thinking about him..."

The parent's looked at eachother for a moment, before shaking their heads resolutely.

"Nuh uh!" They both exclaimed, "Sakura loves Sasuke too much, Naruto's just a friend to her. Besides, we've been in Naruto's head recently and he can't stop thinking about you Hinata, he's crazy for you!"

She was starting to doubt these mischievous smiles really belonged to his parents. But while it seemed implausible to her that Naruto was in love with her, she was going to find out soon when she returned to Konoha.

There were only a few lost souls littering the battlefield, enemy and ally alike. After that she could hang out with the dead, or go back to the living world.

And while she related this to Naruto's parents, the steely glint in Kushina's eyes told her to go back to Konoha soon, or there'd be hell to pay.

Hinata wished her own mother was there, she needed kind reassurance right now. Too bad though, the red-headed Uzumaki's threats got to her.

"State your name and reason for being here newcomer!"

The anbu guard at the South gate glared down at the dark-haired girl, who flinched and gave a squeak of fright.

"H-hinata H-Hyuuga. I l-live here..."

Her appearance checked out as well as her chakra signature. The fact that she hadn't been seen in a year however, made him suspicious. He turned to his subordinate, a young chuunin-rank boy.

"Send a message to the Hokage. Tell him Hinata Hyuuga's here and we await further instructions..."

Kakashi glanced out the window. Call it instinct, but something in the air felt strange today. He'd been going over the treaty conditions written out by the raizekage of Lightning Country. If all goes well, their alliance would mean the last of Konoha's biggest enemies gone.

"Come in."

He knew the chuunin behind the door froze in shock, knuckles ready to rap against the doorframe. He had very good senses on top of some pretty powerful jutsu that conplimented his single sharingan eye quite nicely.

He was the Hokage for good reason, after all.

"Hokage-sama, I bring news of a returning missing-nin being held at the south gate."

"Oh?"

"Yes, she claims to be Hinata Hyuuga."

"Hmm... thank you, Konohamaru."

Kakashi ditched the paperwork. Right now something a little more interesting was waiting for him.

Being a gate-guard sucked. Konohamaru dragged himself back towards the south wall, wanting nothing more than to go find Moegi and Udon and hopefully get Naruto to train them some more. He'd been like a sensei to them, since their old one died in the war last year.

As luck would have it Naruto was sparring with both of his teammates when he passed training ground 12.

"Hey Kono-kun, come help us beat Naruto-sensei!" Moegi called out, seeing the frown on the brown-haired boy's face. Udon was too focused to greet him, simply waving while he tried his best to punch Naruto's face.

To no avail obviously, the older blonde flicked it off without a sweat, arms crossed and tongue out cheekily. "Aren't you on guard duty squirt?"

"I'm not squirt anymore, I'm almost as tall as you Naruto!"

He was only 3 inches shorter than the 6 foot Naruto stood at, just that guy wait until he hit 18...

"Yeah, but you'll never get as strong..." Naruto grinned as Konohamaru pouted.

"I had to run a message to the Hokage about someone at the gate. She claimed to be a missing-nin but it could be a disguise."

"Oh, who is she?"

Konohamaru shrugged. "Some Hyuuga girl, can't remember the first n- huh?"

His sensei was suddenly very close, their foreheads almost touching.

"Was her first name Hinata?"

"Y-yeah, Hinata Hyuuga. Was she a friend of yours?"

"Which gate?"

"South."

Naruto took off without another word, leaving nothing but his dust-trail. "What was that all about?"

Moegi shook her head at his confused expression. "Hinata's his girlfriend! Don't you remember him and Sakura-san talking when we were spying on them at Ichiraku's?"

"Hey, we weren't spying! We were on a reconnaissance mission to gain intel on Uzumaki-sensei's secret powers." Udon walked over to them, wiping the heavy sweat off his brow. "He's been kinda mopey since the war, understandable with all our lost shinobi but still, everyone else got over it."

"You're right Udon, maybe if she's back he'll go back to old Naruto-sensei."

The three had discussed his change a while back. When he returned from the battlefield he seemed pretty happy. But then news of the dead and missing hit and he lost his smile. Hope this works in cheering him up...

Hinata found herself in the Hokage's office, a smiling Kakashi in front of her. Things were really quiet and awkward on her part. Judging by his eye-smile, he'd seen a lot less pleasant things in his office, however short his reign as Hokage may be.

"So, Hinata-san, care to explain where you've been?"

"Yes Hokage-sama, I was-"

"HINATA!!!"

The door slammed open and a blur of black and orange barged in. Dragging behind him was a furious Ino Yamanaka and uncaring Shikamaru Nara, the Hokage's head of interrogation and strategic advisor respectively and secretaries on the side.

Naruto scanned the room grinning.

"God damnit! Sorry Hokage-sama he was too strong..." Ino stated, releasing her grip on the Uzumaki's forearm.

Before Hinata could even blink at the intruders she was engulfed in a huge bear-hug. The scent of ramen and earthy sweat surrounded her, she couldn't take it. "N-naruto-kun..." She barely managed to get it out before she fainted in her chair.

It certainly had been entertaining, Kakashi thought, laughing at a guilty Naruto, shocked and mad Ino and a confused but trying hard not to care Shikamaru.

'This seems troublesome, better stay quiet.' Shikamaru thought, closing his eyes in frstration. "Eh? Hinata?" Ino was glad to see the unconscious Hyuuga, but still shocked.

Later, much later, Hinata was up again and ready to tell her story. Kakashi was completely convinced it was really her thanks to that little reaction, and had sent messengers to inform the village publicly of Hinata Hyuuga's return.

Within the hour a crowd gathered outside his office door, including her father and sister, teammates Kiba and Shino, Kurenai, who'd left her infant daughter with a babysitter, the two remaining Team Gai members plus their sensei Gai, Choji, since his teammates were in there already, and Sakura.

They were ushered inside and one-by one greeted a heavily blushing Hinata. She was being fanned by Ino, Shikamaru lay on the couch and Naruto had turned away from Hinata and Ino, also blushing slightly.

"Exactly what... happened?" Hiashi asked suspiciously, looking from his daughter to Naruto to the Hokage.

"Welllll... it's a long story..." all five of them replied at once.

"I've been in the other world guiding lost souls to their final resting place."

"Pardon?"

The whole room echoed the same word, gawking at the blushing teen.

"I've. been. in. the. other-"

"Hinata, we heard you the first time. But we don't understand, are you saying something like you're a death-god?" Sakura asked, to clarify to the rest of the room even though she'd already seen it.

"Death-goddess you mean" Naruto corrected, still grinning. She nodded and the crowd gave mixed reactions, mostly of disbelief. "I could just show you my shinigami form..."

She stood up and disappeared in a puff of smoke. When it cleared she reappeared as shinigami Hinata, looking creepier than ever.

"The white hair's different." Naruto commented.

"Yeah, lot of stress came with the job."

The room was almost dead silent save for those few words. Almost everyone performed signs to ward off any henge or genjutsu, with no result however. This was real.

"So I'm half shinigami, half human. Mother never told you what she was, father?"

Hiashi shook his head. "I guess the thought never occured to her..." he stated bitterly.

"Does that mean... I'm like you?" Hanabi asked, curious. Hinata shook her head, "I've known what I was my whole life, I guess it's a one per generation deal. Sorry Hanabi..."

"No problem, you don't look like you're having a good time with that, even for a shinigami you look like shit."

"Thanks sis." The two girls shared a smirk while Hiashi scowled at his youngest daughter for cursing.

"So why didn't you ever bring this up during missions huh?" Kiba asked, frowning.

"Dude, we've never done anything above C-rank as a group, the power wasn't necessary..."

Shino nodded silently. Although he was shocked as well, he knew she had a lot of good reasons to not mention this to them. He accepted it, and her.

"Well... I guess it changes nothing. So why were you gone so long Hinata-chan?" Kurenai asked.

"After the war there were a tonne of lost souls trying to hang out back here. It's my job to make sure they move on, and it took a long time to get rid of them all."

"Did you meet... Asuma?"

She nodded, "he was clinging onto you sensei, but I made him leave. He said he'll be waiting for you with his father and brother, and he'll be waiting to meet Hitori as well."

She gasped. No-one had mentioned Hitori's name yet, she couldn't help but find truth in all of this.

"I met Neji nii-san too. He was really happy..."

These words were directed to her family and Team Gai.

"Of course he was, the flames of youth move him even in death!" Gai stated, while Rock Lee bawled in happiness behind him. Tenten nodded softly, then preceded to look out the window. Hiashi and Hanabi smiled as well.

"All of your parents who passed on, they wanted me to tell you how proud they are of you guys..." The whole room ran across with murmurs, mostly from Team Asuma, her teammates and Sakura.

"Did you meet my parents in the other world?" Naruto asked, pressing forward.

"Yup. Your mom did most of the talking, and she said a lot of things."

"What did she say?"

"Umm... tell you bout it later."

She was blushing again, looking around at the huge crowd who all had their eyes on her. Naruto merely shrugged, still grinning.

"So I guess your story holds true Hinata-san. Refrain from leaving the village for long periods of time again, and if you do just come check in with me okay?"

"Will do Hokage-sama, but just so you know if I wanted to leave, you couldn't stop me."

"Oh I think there'd be a way to find you if you tried to run..."

Kakashi looked pointedly at the determined grin on Naruto's face.

"I'd find you Hinata, believe it!"

"Oh yeah, where were you while I was missing this whole time?"

"Ha! I knew you were busy because Kurama told me, he's a spirit too you know..."

"Well I can go to other places besides the spirit world..."

He didn't care that her angry brother teammates AND scary father were in the room, this was a challenge he wouldn't back down from, he thought as he placed a hand on each of her arm-rests and faced the blushing Hyuuga with a heated gaze.

"Not without me you're not."

"Hmph. Challenge accepted!"

"Aaah young love!" Gai exclaimed, his eye smile almost identical to Kakashi's.

"I know right? This is adorable!"

"The flames of youth run strong through their veins!"

"When's the wedding Hiashi-sama?"

"WHAT! My daughter's not getting married or dating for at least another ten years!"

"Oh come on Dad, they're 17!"

"Hey wait!" Tenten asked, looking around, "where'd they go?"

Both Naruto and Hinata had vanished from the room.

"I believe Hinata flickered out of the room during the distraction of your arguing." Shino stated.

"And I saw Naruto swear and run out right after!" Choji added, sitting on the couch with a sleeping Shikamaru.

"That baka, running off without telling us!" Sakura growled, taking off after the blonde.

"After my daughter!" Hiashi yelled, running out the door.

Everyone ran out except a laughing Kakashi and sleeping Shikamaru.

'Good luck kids...' he thought, pushing his paperwork to the side and kicking his feet up. Maybe today was the time for that much needed holiday.

"Showed them!" Hinata yelled, punching the air as she leaned back against a tree, crouching low. She'd gotten out of there as soon as possible, she had the little matter of her floating home to attend to.

"Showed who?"

Hinata groaned inwardly, covering her face. Bright blue eyes sat against a face so close to hers their foreheads were almost touching. Although he was hanging upside down from the tree, arms folded with a cocky grin.

"We did this same thing two years ago didn't we?"

"Yeah, we did."

"Only I was pretty clueless back then."

"I guess..."

"So, what happens now? I mean..."

He scratched his head. What did happen now? She uncovered her face, the blush back in full force. It was really cute now that he thought about it. He liked making her blush and stutter.

"I guess we were playing a game. You caught me, so I'll give you a prize."

"Oh? Awesome! What do I win?"

"I-I'll show you..."

She took his hand and gently tugged him down from the tree. He felt his cheeks redden as she kept holding his hand, guiding him back to the south gate.

"Hinata-chan, where are we going?"

'He called me Hinata-chan!' She thought with a soft smile.

"To my home. It's just outside the gate."

"Oh."

Oh was right. Naruto found himself dragging something huge and invisible along. He couldn't feel anything other than the chain he held, but it was seriously heavy, though it didn't make a noise other than the light chink sound of the chain.

"It's a surprise!" Hinata replied to his enquiry about what exactly he was dragging along. She was holding onto another chain beside her, leaning back and using her weight to tug the massive thing.

"I think here's pretty good."

They were on the edge of the forest surrounding the west wall. The village was a ten minute walk away but it was nowhere near any other houses or people in fact.

"O...kay?" Naruto watched as she wrapped her invisible chain around a sturdy tree. She gathered chakra into her palm and gripped the chain.

"Release!"

And now he could see the silver metal running all the way up to... a chunk of floating land, on which a house sat.

"That's my home" she explained, "I'll make you ramen inside for a prize. You... still like ramen don't you?"

He'd seen floating land before, Myobuku was a mountainous island that drifted through space and he'd spent months there. But in Konoha? In their world? It was definitely a rare sight.

They cleared almost 30 metres jumping up here and it was even bigger-looking up close than it looked from below. The ground was green and grassy, with garden patches of interesting flowers and the beginnings of fruits and vegetables sprouting.

"This is the courtyard, dojo on the east, kitchen on the north, bedrooms and bathroom on the west." She pointed out the sliding doors to him before taking off her shoes and heading for the doors straight ahead.

He followed suit, taking off his sandals on the verandha and sliding the other door wide open. Inside was a bright kitchen and dining area, the walls were yellow and the floor the same stained natural wood planks as the courtyard.

"Show yourself around Naruto-kun, I'll be in here." She smiled softly, before heading for the kitchen. "Okay!" Naruto headed towards the east wing first.

"This dojo is huge! You train here all by yourself?"

"Pretty much, don't worry the space get's used."

The room looked to be about 30 metres by 20, with two lines of training weights, a combat post and several shelves of various wooden weapons.

The metal stuff was probably hidden, Naruto thought, no good ninja would leave deadly weapons on display. Although wood could be deadly, Yamato-sensei could enforce that idea with his wood-style jutsu.

He walked back to the west wing and found a corridor with five doors. While one was a closet and another led back outside, he found a luxurious bathroom with a huge bathtub, a room that was probably her bedroom and an empty room across from it.

"Is that a spare bedroom?" Naruto asked, sitting on the ground by the low dining table.

"Mmm, I haven't got much stuff so I'm not sure what to make of that room..."

She brought a steaming pot of ramen over and set it on the stone plate, where bowls, a jug of water with cups and chopsticks were already waiting.

"Dinner's ready." she stated softly, smiling at Naruto's gleeful expression.

"That was delicious!"

He'd eaten three bowls of ramen to her one, leaving nothing left. Hinata's ramen now rivalled Teuchi's, it was really just that good!

"I usually have leftovers, thanks for not wasting anything."

"No problem, call me over whenever you cant eat it all."

Patting his full belly, he gathered the dishes and started washing them.

"You don't have to!"

"No it's okay, I don't mind."

He set the washed dishes on the rack carefully, feeling content. That feeling left slightly when he turned back and found himself alone.

Now where'd she run off to?

He found her eventually, sitting outside near the west wing with her feet dangling off the edge of the floating land. Naruto didn't feel the need to say anything, smiling softly, he crouched down next to her and stuck his feet off the edge as well. They watched the sun setting, side-by-side.

"That was really nice." Naruto said aloud.

"Hey Hinata-chan?"

"Yes Naruto-kun?"

"Was my prize for catching you all of this? A date with you?"

"Well... I guess, yeah."

"Hmm... Hinata?"

"Yeah?"

"You should run away more often."

She giggled at his goofy smile following those words. Then she stopped, blushing slightly because their eyes were suddenly locked. She felt like her heart was going to explode as he leaned forward and she mirrored his actions. Their lips were just about to touch when...

"HEY HINATA! YOU THERE?"

A familiar bark followed those words and Hinata quickly jumped up, leaving Naruto to lean too far forward and face-plant the ground.

Grumbling, he watched Hinata run back to the courtyard with an expression of annoyance.

So very close to his first kiss... well, not counting the unmentionable incident with the teme during their academy days.

"Kiba-kun!" Hinata greeted her teammate who was staring at her home, gobsmacked. Akamaru tackled her gently, before lying down so Hinata could rub his belly.

"We were looking for you all day Hinata, what... is..."

Shino moved forward as well, only then did Hinata notice him.

"Oh hey Shino-kun, didn't see you there."

Her words were met with stony silence.

"Yeah, so I had to take off from the Hokage's office and... bring my place into the Konoha boundaries."

"How did you fit this through the gates?"

"Kiba-kun... it went over the walls."

Both Hinata amd Shino rolled their eyes as Kiba palmed his face.

"I knew that! I just..."

"Spoke before you thought?"

Shino finally said something, moving towards the verandha and sitting down. He seemed to relax a bit from his depression over her not noticing him earlier.

"This place is very nice Hinata."

"Thank you Shino-kun."

She took a seat beside him while Kiba and Akamaru sat on the soft grass below.

"And you're here by yourself huh?"

"Yeah, but... oh!"

Hinata jumped up and told them to stay there while she rounded the house. She'd forgotten Naruto!

"My teammates are here! Sorry I left you Naruto-kun."

She bowed to him, but he simply smiled and waved it off. "It's fine Hinata-chan, but it's getting late though. I'm gonna head off now."

"Oh... okay, bye Naruto."

She bowed again and he took off into the evening, plummeting down before using a wind-style jutsu to slow down his descent.

'Damn it Kiba! Shino! You guys couldn't wait like 5 more minutes...' He grumbled all the way home, finally hitting his pillow with a sigh of frustration.

Hinata sat with her teammates for a while, catching up on what they'd been doing in the last year.

"Oh yeah Hinata, you're the only one who didn't get ranked up to jounin!" Kiba remembered, "we all got our vests after the war. I'm guessing the hokage's got plans for your promotion, but there's supposed to be a big ceremony to go with it, like we did when we graduated together..."

"Ceremony?" Hinata squeaked, "I'd rather stay a chuunin."

"But you could be on our team if you ranked up!"

"The graduation ceremony is an unavoidable occasion Hinata, it'd be best if you let it happen."

"Shino-kun..." Hinata hung her head as the Aburame shook his. Of course it was going to happen, and since she missed her class graduation it looks like she was going to have to do it alone.

It happened three weeks later. The ceremony was small, pretty much all the people who'd been in the Hokage's office when she first arrived plus the few clan members who didn't think she was unworthy to be a Hyuuga or trash.

There was also the addition of a scowling Sasuke Uchiha, who'd arrived back from a long mission and was forced to come by Sakura.

"Konoha wishes to honour you for your participation in the shinobi war with your promotion to jounin-status Hinata Hyuuga. Do you accept the responsibility that comes with upholding the title of a fully-fledged hidden-leaf shinobi?"

"I do. I promise to uphold and protect my village with everything I have, to protect and assist my fellow shinobi, and to protect every single person that calls the hidden-leaf village their home. This is a promise I make on my honour as a ninja, so I cannot go back on it. For that is my nindo!"

Kakashi placed the flak-jacket and brand new headband in her arms and they bowed to eachother. The small group of people cheered, none more so than Naruto who was yelling at the top of his lungs encouraging words, making Hinata blush and Hiashi glare at him. He paid her father no mind and ran over to hug her as she left the stage.

"Congratulations Hinata!"

Her face went even redder, he was hugging her while everyone stared. Including her father.

"A long-overdue accomplishment Hinata." her father stated gruffly, placing a hand on her shoulder when Naruto finally let go. "Thank you father." She beamed at finally being able to get some sort of praise from him.

"Father, don't forget to remind her of the meeting!" Hanabi said, still sitting down.

"Meeting?"

"Yes, the elders wanted to call a meeting to discuss your role in the clan."

"I imagine they're not very happy I'm back."

"That would be an understatement. But you're always welcome as long as I'm head."

"Thanks dad, but see I've had a taste of independent-living and I don't think I could go back to having slaves wait on me hand and foot, I actually never liked it in the first place..."

Hiashi contained his astonishment and simply nodded in understanding. "I understand your want of freedom, however I do ask that you have respect for yourself and not allow many... nightly escapades, so to speak."

A single, pointed look at Naruto had both teenagers blushing.

"Y-yes father."

"Good. The meeting will be in 3 days, please be there at noon."

"Okay. Bye father, Hanabi..."

She hugged her sister and bowed to her father, who left quickly to resume their busy schedules as clan-head and heiress. Naruto breathed a sigh of relief at her father's retreating back, interlacing one hand with Hinata's.

"Ino wanted to throw a small party, it's been a while since the whole lot of us had time off at once. The party's just for jounin though, wanna go?"

"A party for me? Hell yeah!"

"I didn't say it was for you."

"Jounin, hello?" She pointed to the jacket she now wore proudly, just like the rest of the people in the room their age.

"Yo dobe, hurry up!" Sasuke smirked at him, having just arrived back from his missiom last week. This was the first time Hinata had seen him in the village. He was still kind of arrogant, but most of it was just put on to aggravate Naruto. He never failed to rise up to the challenge though, yelling back at his best-friend/rival.

"Shut it teme! I was talking to Hinata!"

"Talk to her at the party. We're leaving now."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Hmm." She sighed happily, keeping a light grip on his hand while catching up with the rest of their group. He looked cute when he pouted.

"Kinda crazy party huh?" Sakura giggled through sips of punch. The music was really loud but the cheers of the rambunctious teens as they attempted dance-moves carried over to the pink-haired kunoichi's ears.

'Attempted' being the key-word. Shinobi were never given dance-lessons as part of their learning curriculum.

Tenten sighed happily, "it's nice that we can relax like this. Everyone here deserves a break after what they went through..."

"What WE went through Tenten-san, now don't be a downer and enjoy!"

"You're right Sakura. I'm gonna go ask Kiba to dance..."

"Kiba? Are you interested in him?"

The brown-haired weapons mistress smiled. "Well, kinda."

"Go for it girl!" Sakura almost shrieked as she pushed her friend into the crowd. She watched Tenten move over to the guy sitting with Shino, Hinata and Akamaru, each of the humans had punch in their hands.

Sakura saw her nervously greet them all before holding a hand out to the Kiba, who took it with a surprised expression.

Hinata looked across the floor and caught the pinkette's eyes. She raised her glass in a secret toast between them and Sakura mirrored her actions.

"Hinata-chan?"

The indigo-haired girl turned away from Sakura and faced her teammate.

"What's up Shino-kun?"

"I feel I should warn you, our beverages were laced with alcohol."

"Really? I couldn't taste anything funny."

"It isn't a lot, my kikaichu told me there is something within the range of 4-6% alcohol content. Someone probably spiked the communal punch bowl, I believe I spotted Sai pouring an unknown flask of something in there."

"I'll take your word for it Shino-kun. But FYI, those were the first words you've spoken all night. I think you may already be intoxicated."

Shino thought about it for a moment. He definitely felt different, the room swayed a little and his kikaichu were practically humming.

"Hinata-chan?"

"Yes Shino-kun?"

"Forgive me for what I'm about to do, I'm drunk."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to dance. Will you join me on the dance-floor?"

Hinata didn't even have time to reply as he pulled her up to her feet, keeping a distance of two feet between their bodies the whole time. He dropped her hands and looked around, unsure what to do.

"Like this Shino-kun, step back when I move forward and forward when I step back. Dancing is like sparring, only we never connect body parts, we move around eachother instead."

What they were doing had caught the interest of everyone in the room. Shino had taken her words to heart and they were caught in a dance that looked like sparring, only fists and legs stopped in mid-air and they made it so sweeping kicks could easily be jumped over.

The band of drummers, flute and horn-players and rattled instruments sped up their pace a little, watching the movements of the speedy couple.

While Hinata moved more fluidly, arms outstretched and jumping from each foot gracefully, Shino was a lot more robotic, his joints bended and twisted in a way where one expected to hear creeking noises.

He looked really cool though, and their dance finished with Hinata doing three backflips and leaning back into Shino's outstretched arm.

They bowed to eachother as everyone in the room cheered, laughing loudly.

"Hinata, Shino!" Sakura pulled them over to her little corner, where a relaxed Sasuke and somewhat envious Naruto sat.

The first thing Shino did was bow to Naruto, who gaped in shock and annoyance at him.

"My apologies Naruto. I didn't mean to try to steal your girlfriend from you, but I had the urge to expel excess energy and she was the nearest available person to accompany me."

"S'allright Shino, not like we're dating or anything..." Naruto grumbled in reply.

"We're not dating?"

He looked to her puppy-dog expression, palming his face. "I didn't mean it like that! It's just we're not exclusive yet or... wait..."

"Not exclusive? Are you dating other girls too?"

"What! No you're twisting my words!"

The forlorn expression on Hinata's expression suddenly turned to one of mischief. She moved to his side and intertwined her fingers into his free ones. "I was teasing you, sorry."

"Before I forget, Shino told me these drinks are alcoholic so don't have too much."

"What!" Sakura pushed her punch away from her. "I can't go home to my mom smelling like booze, she'll think I'm reckless!"

"Relax guys!" Ino barged in on the conversation. "I got Sai to add a little sake in the punch, just enough so everyone has a good time. And nobody's going home! There are made beds for everyone, boy's room is upstairs first to the left, girl's upstairs at the end of the corridor. Bathrooms in the bedrooms, I'm passing this message along to everyone."


	3. Duet of Mass Destruction

With that matter settled everyone got really into the party. Naruto and Hinata got up to dance, doing something similar to her and Shino's earlier routine only this one was more lively, especially when they both expelled 12 shadow clones each and did a synchronized fight sequence.

"Wait, how long have you known kage bushin?" Naruto asked incredulously, ducking from a sweeping hook Hinata tried to give him. She twisted around as he kicked out so their shoulders were touching, only he saw her back next to him. "I saw you do it once or twice, copied the signs and figured it out on my own." She attempted to elbow him in the gut but he caught it and twisted her arm behind her back lightly, spinning them around and letting her unravel out before him.

"You'll never stop surprising me Hinata-chan." He pulled her so close their noses touched. "Wanna get some air? I'm a little warm." she asked, grinning.

They left their clones on the dancefloor, sneaking out through the back door of the Yamanaka's home.

"It's almost midnight, the band leaves soon" Ino told Sakura, who nodded. "I'm pretty beat anyways, luckily I have the noon-shift tomorrow. Gonna take a walk with Sasuke and then we'll probably head in."

"Take your time Sakura" she winked at the pinkette who simply giggled. 'Speaking of boyfriends, where's Sai?'

As if on cue, familiar long, slender fingers placed themselves over her eyes.

"Yo Ino, guess who?"

"Errh, Shika-kun?"

"Why would you think that? He was right in front of you with Temari."

His head rested on her shoulder, arms around her waist. "Were you trying to make me jealous?"

"No, but you still frowned a little."

"I hope you aren't imagining things."

"I'm not. Remember I can read your mind as well, there were definite flashes of anger when I said another guy's name."

"Well, whatever the reason for said anger, it's nice to know I may be capable of emotion."

"You're more than capable Sai, you proved that to me two nights ago..."

She whispered the last bit into his ear, and while he did nothing more than shiver slightly, it was a lot for him. His emotions came through in very small bursts, usually singular and easy to identify. He could only feel pleasure or pain, never at the same time. It made him a pretty simple guy, and Ino really liked that.

She had pretty singular tastes as well, all revolving around the pale-skinned dark-haired shinobi currently wrapped around her.

The party had been really nice, but it ended the next morning. Half of the said party-goers were called off by the Hokage to take up missions.

"I hope we don't take too long with this, I've got a meeting in 2 days..."

Hinata stood between her teammates, worried.

"It won't take long, it's just border patrol."

Shino read through the details of the mission. A large number of bandits were spotted outside the walls of Konoha. While bandits were pretty low-level for jounin, the large number of them bumped this mission up to an A-rank. Kiba had assured the Hokage that they could handle this alone.

After all, Hinata was pretty freaking powerful in shinigami-mode, not that her human form was anything to trifle with. Shino and Kiba had grown huge in the last year and definitely looked like imposing men. For Shino his size meant more and stronger kikaichu and for Kiba it meant more strength and speed in his muscles. Together the three of them were capable of taking out 30 bandits and then some.

Mission success of course. They used their tracking abilities to find the groups, conveniently split up into 6 camps of 5 or 6 members and picked the camps off one by one. The kikaichu would go in first to drain their chakra, then they'd all jump in and knock them out before tying them up.

This process was repeated for all 6 groups and they were taken into the village underground prison for interrogation. Afterwards they may be killed, or join the village as members of society. The former happened more often usually.

Hinata walked along happily, her money from the mission had been put into her personal account and now she could add onto the bare necessities currently in her house. She didn't need a lot being of a simple nature, but meat had become a scarcity. God, ramen with lots of meat would taste great right now.

"Wonder if Naruto will come over tonight?" She wondered. "Yeah, definitely."

She went to the markets and grabbed a basket, perusing the merchants wares. Requesting packets of beef, pork and chicken, she chatted with the butcher who was just admiring her land the other day.

"So where can I get a floating rock like that?" Rujin asked, cleaving several cuts of beef from the bone and wrapping it up for her.

"It's a jutsu I developed, my chakra runs through the earth and keeps it floating. Also the rock is special, it came from a really faraway land and it doesn't take much chakra to float."

Really faraway land being completely different dimension.

"Well that's amazing little lady! And do you get the utilities from up there? Hot water and that?"

"Yup. It gathers natural energy and condensation from the air around it and uses it, not to get too technical. And the sewer systems basic, but waste either goes into the land mass itself or gets burned back into the air."

"I think you lost me at natural energy little lady."

Hinata giggled, bowing to the butcher. "Sorry sir, I need to carry on now."

"Have a good day miss!"

She needed soap as well, and an extra blanket because it was starting to get cold with the upcoming winter. Carrying bags of groceries home, she wandered across some of the training grounds.

Every one of her friends who weren't on missions or had just come back from one were there.

"Hey Naruto-kun!"

She called out to the blonde shinibi whose head shot up at the sound of her voice. He was in front of her instantly.

"Hey sensei get back here!" Moegi shouted, stomping her foot on the ground while Konohamaru and Udon took his absence as an oppurtunity for a break after being strenuously worked out.

"In a minute!" Naruto called back, turning to Hinata with a grin. "What's up Hinata?"

"Just wondering if you wanted to come over for dinner tonight? It's ramen again."

"Did you even need to ask?"

"No, I guess not."

He was already drooling at the thought of ramen and she giggled. "Have fun training Naruto-kun, see you in a couple of hours."

Once home she put away her groceries and went out to the garden. There were carrots and potatoes ready to be picked as well as tomatoes. Giggling, Hinata remembered the time she'd left a basket of tomatoes at Sasuke's doorstep with a little note telling him to enjoy. Sakura had told her about his like of tomatoes, and since she didn't have much of a taste for them she gave him almost all of her pick for that week. He was pretty thankful, even went so far as to come over and peruse her tomato patch, asking how he could grow his own.

Washing and storing the vegetables in dry cupboards, she went fruit picking next. She liked all fruits, well... except tomatoes. Apples and oranges grew in a single tree each outside and strawberries were held in large pots on the windowsill, soaking in the last of the sunlight. She'd make Naruto eat those, he needed to lay off ramen a bit and get into moderate eating.

Not that she minded him eating ramen so much, but he was going to eat more than that while she was around.

"Hey Hinata!"

"Come in Naruto-kun."

He stopped at the door, letting the warmth and smell of home-cooking wash over him. Hinata had her back turned to him, hair held back in a bandanna wearing a cute apron over her training clothes.

'She looks so cute!' He thought happily, smiling like a kitten while drifting over to lean on the small counter next to her. She smiled at him, dropping a load of chopped vegetables into the merrily boiling pot. "It'll be ready really soon, how was your day?"

"Pretty good, I can tell this is gonna taste great already."

"Hmm." She shifted around him carrying the heavy pot and set it on the stone plate on the table. Once again the table was already set and they dug in.

"That was awesome." Naruto patted his belly again, leaning against the wall the dining table sat against and smiling contently. Hinata had insisted on leaving the dishes in the sink and brought over a bowl of washed and cut fruit. She held out a hand to Naruto who took it without question, and led him back out to the spot they'd left almost a month ago. The sun was just setting making it a perfect time to pick up where they left off.

So far every time Naruto had tried to kiss her they'd either been distracted by an outside influence or he'd lost his nerve. She was really shy most of the time too so being intimate was hard, but he could wait.

"Naruto-kun, please eat this with me."

"Fruit? Wow I hardly ever get to eat that."

He blushed as she snuggled up really close to him. She giggled through her own blush and stuffed a slice of orange in his mouth.

"They grow in the fruit trees outside and plants in my kitchen. Oranges are my favourite because they're what I imagine liquid sunshine tastes like."

"You're weird."

"I know. And as a shinigami I don't really eat, but strangely oranges are the only thing I can hold down. Maybe it's all because the colour reminds me of you Naruto-kun."

She blushed while saying this, but he only grinned more widely. He munched all the fruit down thoughtfully, tasting each individual one.

"I think I like strawberries the best, because the colour reminds me of your face when you're embarassed, it's really cute."

She blushed as bright as the strawberry in his hand and he laughed, bringing the piece of fruit close to her cheek. "See!"

"N-naruto-kun!"

"I'm just teasing you Hinata-chan. I really like making you blush because it's something only I can do."

"That's true. You're pretty much the only one who embarasses me, why do I like you again?"

She almost slapped a hand over her mouth. He laughed even louder and pulled an arm around her shoulder, dropping the fruit in his hand. He was giving her that goofy grin that was probably her favourite smile in the world.

"Hinata-chan, why do you like me?"

She had to look away from his gaze. She'd only just gotten used to his presence and the occasional hand-holding, eye-contact added onto their snuggling would probably cause her to have a panic attack.

"N-naruto-kun, I like you because you're always bright like the sun. And you've got a lot of spirit and never ever give up, working so hard to make your dream a reality. I-I watched you a lot when we were kids, and you gave me the courage to be strong as well. I couldn't imagine where I'd be today if you weren't around N-naruto-kun."

She'd said a lot of words and stopped for a second to breathe.

"Oh yeah... I suppose there's the fact that you're really handsome. And you always make me laugh, I like laughing."

She giggled a little, but it died out at his wide-eyed expression.

"Y-you really like me for all those reasons Hinata-chan?"

"Y-yes."

"Well then, I guess I better tell you why I like you."

"I... you..."

She couldn't get the words out and just leaned on his shoulder with her eyes closed, listening to his words.

"I like you because you're soft and gentle and you never hit me and you're always sweet to me Hinata-chan. I never appreciated this before now even though you were like that the whole time we knew eachother. During my training 2 years ago once Kurama took me to the spirit-world and I met my parents. They told me about you, they said they saw you putting groceries on my balcony when we were really young and I remember, you did that for years!"

'Oh god, they told him about it even before they talked to me!' she thought, 'did Kushina give him the same speech about getting married? I don't want that brought up right now! It might feel like he's being pressured...'

"And you protected me from the mobs that tried to attack me by leading me to safety." A small memory of a slight figure in a dark cloak with the hood pulled right down tugged the corners of his lips up.

"I don't think I could ever thank you enough Hinata-chan. And yeah you're really pretty, I mean... beautiful, and I like the way you always laugh at my jokes, it gives me a lot of confidence. I just... I just hope I can always make you happy-mmph!"

She finally did it. Fruit lay forgotten behind them as she'd pushed forward to kiss him. They were soon lost in the sensation of eachother's lips sweet with the juices from what they'd eaten.

It had definitely been a good idea to eat fruit before this, Hinata thought happily as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She'd thought a little about it, deciding she could feign reasons of wanting him to be healthy. She'd even shifted her usual dinner time to an hour earlier so they'd catch the sunset and made sure no-one would come over and bother them.

It was all so they could have the sweetest most perfect first-kiss, and perfect it was.

They'd been at it for over five minutes, her hands still around his neck and his around her waist. Awkward sitting positions aside, Naruto had never felt his heart wanting to burst so much. This was heaven! It was the most amazing, the most... god, he couldn't even put it in words. He felt like he was floating, well... he technically was on her floating land.

She finally moved back from him, taking deep breaths to calm her light blush. He looked up from her reddened lips to her large lavender eyes that gazed softly into his. This was probably the greatest moment of his life.

The next day, Hinata appeared at the Hyuuga compound, calming herself down with deep breaths. They were just nerves, having not been to her home for a year and a half and then being forced to attend a meeting with people who hated her guts could do that to any person. She wrapped her arms around her body, smoothing down the simple lavender kimono that she wore. It was the only piece of formal clothing she had, the rest being her training suits and a few casual clothes.

The gates opened as one of the branch-house servants bowed to her.

"Hinata-sama, you are on time. Hiashi-sama awaits you in the main dojo, please allow me to escort you."

"No need Takano-san, I remember where it is."

The servant met her eyes with surprise, but found she was smiling warmly. She remembered him, though they'd only met twice, and she didn't want to be escorted or her presence to be announced by him. She really was as sweet as the other branch-members had said. He smiled at her retreating back, going back to his business.

"So we are here to discuss your role as a member of the Hyuuga clan."

An uproar from one side of the room erupted.

"She's supposed to be dead!"

"She's no longer a member!"

"What nonsense is this Hiashi?"

"Weak little girl, go back to your floating home."

And many insults along these lines were thrown at Hinata, who sat quietly, listening to everything they said politely.

"Enough!" Hiashi demanded, making the elders quiet down. "We need to discuss this with no nonsense. Hinata, when you were proclaimed a missing-nin 11 months ago you broke your ties with the village and your clan. We reinstated Hanabi as the new heiress to the clan-head title. Do you wish to contest to that?"

"Hiashi, don't give her a choice!" One of the elders hissed at him. His glowering silence made the older woman back down in shame.

"I don't want to be heiress. Hanabi should be the future clan-head."

She said those words with a polite smile, trying to convey how much she really believed them.

"Are you sure? You have every right to be reinstated as heiress."

There were general hums of disapproval at Hiashi's words, but he ignored them. His eyes were on his oldest daughter, who locked gazes with him firmly

"You will make me fight my younger sister, and I will not win to regain the title. Why? Because I could never hurt Hanabi."

She looked at no-one but her younger sister while saying these words. Big white eyes stared back at her in shock.

"Please nee-san, you're making this worse for yourself."

"It's okay Hanabi, nothing can hurt me. I'm immortal."

Said words were stated with such a cocky grin, everyone in the room save the girl herself wondered if it was actually Hinata.

"While I've already seen your power Hinata, please show the elders why even I couldn't possibly come close to killing you."

The cloud of smoke vanished and Hinata faced the crowd of disbelieving eyes once again.

"Shinigami... it's impossible!"

"Oh it's very possible, thanks to my mother." She stated very softly, looking around the room.

"You cannot kill me, for I am immortal. You will not hurt my family, and any plans to overthrow my sister's right to clan-head will be met with swift justice. No attempts will be made on anyone's life, or I will make sure you pay... dearly."

The room was dead-silent.

"Well that went much better than expected..." Hinata said aloud, after she left her father and sister back at the main-house doorstep.

The sun was shining brightly but it was still pretty chilly outside. Hinata decided some training time was in desperate need. She'd had her three days off and pretty soon she'd be due to go back on duty.

Meandering along, lost in her own world, the girl threw her arms back behind her head and looked up at the sky. It was a glorious day to be alive.

The mixture of a relaxed posture and such formal wear was nothing less than endearing to every Konoha citizen she passed, especially with the lovely features she posessed. Men sighed after her as she went along her merry way and woman envied her beauty and elegance.

Naruto heard the gossip from miles away about the beautiful Hyuuga walking away from the compound.

"She seems so pretty and carefree! Not at all how I expected a disowned heiress to be..."

"Have you seen her floating house? Wish she'd invite us over. Being a non-shinobi sucks since I cant jump that high though..."

"Wonder if she has a boyfriend? I'd ask her out if I was worthy..."

"I'm totally a catch! Girls keep asking me on dates all the time, but since she's pretty much a princess I'll probably have to approach first and ask her out tomorrow..."

He'd just finished lunch at Ichiraku's with his teammates and was going to continue training. However, news of her meeting finishing meant she was free to hang out.

Also, that guy with the shit-eating grin who said he was 'a catch' pissed him off. He stuck his foot out and tripped the guy up before flickering away. That'll show him to brag in front of his friends.

He managed to catch up with her just outside of town. The villagers were lying when they said she looked pretty today, because she was nothing short of gorgeous in that simple kimono that matched her eyes.

"Hinata!"

Said girl turned back at the familiar voice. 'Naruto-kun! How did he know my meeting was over? Oh, he's never seen me wearing anything other than training clothes. I hope he doesn't think this looks bad on me...'

She smiled nervously at him as he made his way down the dirt trail, puffing out air from over-exertion.

"You...*wheeze* look really... *breathe* pretty... in that dress"

"Naruto-kun, thank you."

He took a few more breaths before going back to normal. "Aah! So I was wondering if you wanted to spend the rest of the day with me? I didn't have anything in mind really, but... I mean..."

'As long as it's with you Hinata-chan...'

"Actually, I was planning on training now, do you think we could turn that into a spar?"

"Oh sweet! I was thinking about training as well."

"Great minds think alike huh? We'll start off in the dojo."

"Alright!"

They jumped up to the courtyard and went in opposite directions. "I'm just going to change, give me a sec."

"Okay." Naruto watched Hinata head into the west wing, struggling to keep his mind away from the perverted idea of peeping into her bedroom window. Shaking his head, he took off his sandals and walked into the dojo.

"No wait, put your shoes back on."

When she said give her a sec she really meant it. Walking back out in a black tank-top over her mesh shirt and loose dark-navy shorts that stopped over her knee, Naruto finally got an eyeful of her full female form.

What he could see, the ample curves of her bosom, small waist and rounded hips with a sliver of her flat stomach peeking out from the hem of her top, gave him a nosebleed.

"Sorry Hinata-chan. I'm a little overheated, it's just so hot today!"

'Really, it's been frigid weather despite the sunlight...' Hinata shrugged it off and reached into the first-aid kit in the corner of the dojo for a cloth to wipe up his blood-flow. Keeping a first-aid kit nearby was a pro-tip learnt from years of experience training in dojos, in her human form she tended to hurt herself a lot.

Naruto wiped his nose with an almost guilty expression. He got used to her pretty quickly though and the flow stopped.

"We're going to be doing something a little different today Naruto-kun."

He brought himself close to her and she transformed into her shinigami mode.

"Different how?" he asked, confused.

"I'm going to take you to a different world. The dojo's more for singular training and strictly taijutsu. I was thinking we have a little more fun with this fight."

She gave him a maniacal grin that would have had him cringing, were it not for the crooked upturning of his own lips.

"You mean ninjutsu as well?"

"You betcha Uzumaki."

Her grin stayed as she switched to calling him by last name in a taunting manner. The world was fading around them, it felt like the colour had washed away from the usually blue walls leaving them a dull grey. The sky outside was a paler shade of grey and the floor a murky brown.

Immediately he felt strange. Was it the air? It seemed to be suffocating, like the weight of gravity was pushing down on him more than usual.

"Where are we Hyuuga? It looks like Konoha, but..."

"It's not." She finished for him, now back in her human form. "This is the imbetween world I was talking about, where the lost souls who don't want to move on hang around. It has about twice as much gravity as our world and you'll have a lot more trouble moving around here."

"It seems like a good place to train, if I can ever reach normal speed again."

"You'll get used to it." Hinata shrugged and walked out of the dojo as if the atmosphere didn't affect her. Obviously she'd been training quite a bit here.

"Hey, wait up!" He dragged himself out to the courtyard, barely keeping up and feeling the strain of walking start to drip down his forehead. He took his jacket off and it dropped to the ground with a loud thud.

"Our first task will be jumping down from here." Said Hinata, already teetering over the edge.

"Remember, gravity pulls you down faster, but you can still use chakra and elemental energy here. You'll need a lot more power to land safely." She jumped off the edge and sailed to the floor slowly before touching the ground as if Kami's hand had gently placed her there. She looked up at him expectantly.

"Come on Uzumaki, you can do it!"

So the last names were going to be a thing huh? Naruto smirked and felt his blood pumping with energy, enough that the new weight of the world became a lot less bothersome though he wasn't quite up to full speed just yet.

"Believe it Hyuuga!"

He threw himself off the edge and plumetted to the ground, struggling to breathe. With a gust of wind that used almost a quarter of his natural chakra supply, he managed to land, though not as gracefully as Hinata. As soon as his feet hit the ground though Naruto was incapacitated, his formidable opponent standing over him glowing with purple chakra. "Time to have some fun Uzumaki." she said, making him shiver in anticipation.

She drew the chakra to her fists and waited for him to right himself. Hinata knew striking his tenketsu points would be momentary, as the kyuubi could give out massive influxes of chakra to re-open them. "Kage Bushin!"

Over a hundred Naruto's came charging towards her wielding kunai. She dodged them flawlessly, using just her fists to expel them to smoke while the real Naruto stood back and watched. 'She always moves so gracefully, I love watching her like this.'

He continued expelling more clones to occupy her, focusing on her fighting-style.

"The jyuken style, while powerful, isn't exactly perfect." He commented, folding his arms with a cocky grin.

"I'm aware, we're just getting started." She finally managed to reach him and took a moment to charge her feet as well as her hands. She'd need all the speed she had if she was even going to consider landing a hit on the seasoned jounin before her with kage-level chakra and insane jutsu to boot.

She charged forward and struck his chest with an open palm, only to meet the air.

"Missed me!"

So he'd somehow teleported to an area 10 metres to the right, no biggie. She'd already switched directions and struck his arm this time, held up to block her strike. Mischievous blue eyes locked onto determined lavender ones.

'She hasn't activated her byakugan yet.' He kicked her away and brought his hands up to perform familiar signs.

"Earth style, mud army!"

The ground softened beneath them and rose, forming vaguely human-shaped creatures that immediately lunged for Hinata. She yelped as mud hit the side of her head and glared at Naruto who was clutching his stomach, howling with laughter.

"Gaah my hair, gross!"

"It's a bit of mud, you girls always obsessing over your hair..."

"Hmph." She crossed her arms and turned away from him, sticking her nose up. "Shouldn't have done that Uzumaki."

"Oh don't be like that it was a jo- HEY!"

He watched the mud pull her down below its surface, before completely hardening back to solid earth. But he hadn't made it do that, so what had she...

A vice-like grip wrapped around his ankle and pulled him down. As he stopped almost up to his neck in moist earth, a cheeky grin descended following the completely coated in mud Hinata.

"Just kidding Uzumaki, it is just hair after all..." She pulled herself up from the muck, giggling.

"You look... amazing." He could barely suppress his chuckles as he pulled himself out with brute strength, cracking the hardened ground around him. Hands on his hips, he mentally decided it was time to bring out the big guns.

"It's impressive that you have such control over the element that's your complete opposite, I wonder..."

She stared at her chakra-infused fists, willing it to compress and mix with the air. There was a loud crackling noise, before her glowing chakra burst into purple flames.

"Woah.. it's really beautiful..." she turned to Naruto with a devillish grin, fists clenched and blazing. He already had two concentrated rasengan spheres in his hand, glowing a bright red.

"Kyuubi's chakra already huh?"

"Yeah, I'm saving mine for something bigger."

"Oooh, can't wait."

They charged eachother, sending flying fists through the air and colliding with such force the ground below shook. Legs and arms went flying and gusts of wind fuelled her flames until they were fighting in an explosive sphere of fire.

Hinata could feel her skin peeling off and charring, the mud completely burned away and her hair singed. It would all heal and grow back in a couple of hours, nothing could take away the glory of her fists colliding with flesh and feeling her bones snap under his punches, only to re-mend themselves. This was it, an almost perverted pleasure came from knowing she wouldn't die and so she tested her body's expendability beyond all human limits. She threw concentrated chakra bullets at him from open palms, revelling in the way they went right through him and ripped apart flesh and blood, only to be forgotten on the ground as his wounds healed. He was also regenerative, her true equal in every way.

Naruto had never felt so much pleasure while sparring. Normally he'd always held back, fearful that he might accidentally tear the other person's limbs off. Even Sasuke, his rival and the strongest, well, now second strongest, other person he'd ever fought he couldn't truly pound on since the kyuubi merged with him.

But watching the body beneath him writhe with pleasure as he snapped her arm only for her to cave in his chest with the same arm like he'd never broken it. It was animalistic, primal and the most inexplicably pleasurable feeling his short life had ever experienced. In short, Naruto had never truly revelled in his invincibility until now.

He jumped back on his one good leg, the other had been reduced to a pulpy mess and shattered thigh and shin bones. Three of his ribs poked through skin and blood dripped down his side. Those were the biggest wounds, the rest was a mass of burns, cuts and bruises across every inch of his uncovered skin.

She wasn't in an any better state, blood pouring from her neck where he'd bitten a chunk of flesh off, giving them both a jolt of guilty pleasure. Her arms were broken and mending again and long scratches from his fox-like claws ran all the way around down her legs, across her stomach and back and along her cheeks, like a gorier rendition of his birthmarks.

"God Naruto-kun, I've never felt so alive."

She gasped, breath shaky at the amount of killing-intent he was emitting while he smirked, head bowed but eyes still on her. His aura would be enough to make shinobi cry from miles away. To her though it was a pleasure.

At the unfamiliar feeling of wetness in her lower regions, Hinata blushed, finally coming to her senses. This was getting too sexual, better end the spar here.

"Should we keep fighting? I mean I could stop now, but then again I could keep going..."

He licked his lips slowly, almost groaning at the look she was giving him. It seemed she was almost begging him to... well, he didn't know exactly what she wanted, but he was more than willing to learn.

"We've been at it for hours now and my chakra's almost gone, better stop."

"Cool, I'm pretty exhausted myself."

They sat down side-by-side, letting silence settle over them as their bodies worked to heal themselves. While Naruto poured excess amounts of Kurama's chakra into his system, Hinata went into her shinigami-form and lay back, letting her body do the rest. Almost half an hour passed before Naruto finally felt normal again. He felt apprehensive now, unsure of himself and the girl next to him. Exactly what were they back there?


	4. Serious Matters and Power Couples

"Hinata-chan..."

"Yes Naruto-kun?"

"When we were fighting... how did you feel?"

Not exactly surprising that he asked. She knew her Naruto-kun would be confused, he was feeling pleasure and pain at the same time and it didn't sit well with him.

"Well like I said before, I felt... alive." She started this carefully, hoping he got the idea the way she understood it.

"Could you explain? I don't really get feeling 'alive' because we're always alive when we're not dead." He started this so seriously it was cute. She leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek, earning a light-pink dusting across the healing skin surrounding his nose.

"I guess the best way to put it..." she faced forward, "... when you have this awesome power, that nobody else has. You want to see exactly how awesome that power is, but you cant test it without hurting or breaking things or people. When I was fighting, I could test the full extent of my powers on you without having to worry that I'd hurt you. You were testing me by breaking my body, and I felt really good when I healed quickly. But we kept doing that, and I realised I was more powerful than I ever dreamed. Fighting you Naruto-kun, just being with you, I can let everything out. And you're probably the only one who can match me."

His eyes widened with the realisation. Of course! He'd been thinking all of that during their fight, only he hadn't been able to put it comprehensibly.

"When I'm with you I'm invincible!"

"Exactly, same here."

2 hours later they were healed. Naruto went home to shower and change into clothes that weren't rags. After getting a taste of what sparring with Hinata would be like, he was going to need more training suits.

He changed into a black-shirt and baggy grey trousers with an orange jumper to go over it, tucking his shinobi headband into his pocket.

"I wonder if she's ready, it's been half an hour..." With a shrug he made his way back to Hinata's place, walking leisurely in case she needed the extra time. When he jumped up to her front door though, he was met with the lovely sight of Hinata in a modest but form-fitting lavender dress. The hem of the garment reached her knees, but with her legs crossed on the verandha he could see short white leggings peeking out underneath. Her hair was tied in a high ponytail and her headband was wrapped around her upper arm.

She looked really cute, he blushed as she got up and kissed him on the cheek again. "You clean up nicely." She commented, surveying his casual look with approval. "I could say the same for you." He whispered, entwining their hands together. "Let's go, we'll be late to meet up with everyone at Ichiraku's!"

The entire group was there at the tiny ramen stand, making Teuchi and Ayame's eyes bulge. They'd never had this many customers at once, ever!

Not only that, but they were all young, good-looking couples from Ayame's perspective. The majority of them were shinobi, jounin- level, judging by the ninja-headbands and some flak-jackets most of them wore. She recognised Sakura-chan and Sasuke-kun, they were regular diners with the store's no.1 customer, Naruto-kun. So these guys must all be his friends, where was that knuckle-head anyways?

As if on cue the doorway curtain drew back and said Uzumaki announced his presence with a huge grin.

"Hey nee-san! Yo old-man I'll have the usual and don't skimp on the meat!"

Ayame flicked his ear, "use your manners brat while talking to me and dad! Oh Hinata-chan, you're here too!"

Her eyes turned heart-shaped at the adorable young woman who trailed behind Naruto shyly. "Hello Ayame-san." she greeted politely, before being pulled into a hug by the older woman. "Call me nee-san Hinata-chan, I've always wanted a little sister and I've known you long enough."

'A month is long enough for you?'

Hinata internalised said thought and agreed politely with Ayame nee-san.

Said older woman was once again left to watch the crowd of people. At Naruto's imsistence there was a short introduction to Teuchi and herself by all present members.

It seemed meeting up here was going to be a common occurence. Sakura and Sasuke stayed seated since the owners knew them well, and they were pretty much lost in eachother's eyes anyway. There was Shikamaru and his girlfriend Temari of the Sand Village, who enjoyed bickering like a married couple while quietly sharing cute lovey-dovey looks.

Choji and his girlfriend Karui from the Lightning country, she leaned on his arm lovingly while he consumed a bowl of ramen with almost as much vivaciousness as Naruto. Sai and Ino had an air of sophisticatedness about them, only broken when Sai occasionally said something inappropriate with about as much consciousness of society's frown upon said words as a 5 year old.

Ino would surprisingly respond to his queries as if he'd just been commenting on the weather. Yes Ayame-san probably has a cute-complex. Hinata-san does have big breasts (blush from said girl and glare from Naruto) and Naruto more than likely has a dick (hold reactions of Hinata and Naruto for another few moments).

Ayame would have laughed if not for the cute-complex thing. It wasn't a complex! She could stop squeezing Hinata's cheeks and buying plushies at 25 any time she wanted.

Not that that time was now, or even soon.

Kiba-san and his apparent girlfriend Tenten-san were probably still in the shaky first stages of a relationship, judging by the fleeting gazes between the two and awkward way they sat next to eachother, close enough to brush elbows and no more than that.

Rock Lee sat at the end of the long table with a young woman named Megami Fujioka, a twinkling look in both of their eyes as he regaled the stories of him and his great sensei Maito Gai! (cue sunset and crashing waves).

Of the group they seemed to be the most comfortable as a couple. Actually it was almost sickening to watch, they wore matching green spandex suits with orange arm and leg warmers, and while Megami's hair was an interesting baby-blue shade and long in the back, she'd cut the front with a bowl to look similar to the Gai-Lee duo.

The trio could be called Mega-Gai-Lee! Ugh...

Ayame scanned over the group with a happy smile, but a dark look crossed her face as she once again failed to notice the last couple, sitting in the corner that seemed to be shadowy even with plenty of light around. He'd introduced himself as Shino Aburame, of a clan she already knew had a lot of respect for bugs. The girl next to him was Seika Chojiro, a quiet young woman from Tea-country who could summon insects.

She mentally palmed herself because she forgot about their orders -and their existence- for a second time, and decided to feign the excuse that Onigiri and seaweed soup were not their specialty dishes and so took a little longer to make.

That was a total of 16 people, most of them loud and rambunctious and enough for plenty of conversation to flow, although the occasional light-hearted argument would break out. When they left to go see a movie Teuchi sat with his daughter at the front booth, helping her count out their earnings from that one sitting with gleeful dollar-sign expressions.

The movie, an adaption of Jiraiya's The Gutsy Ninja, had at long last been made and Naruto couldn't be happier. It was full of action and fighting, definitely his kind of movie. While he was enthralled, Hinata viewed it more as a comedy and couldn't help laughing at all the big scenes whereas Naruto gasped in awe.

'Naruto-sama looks so cool in this scene!'

'Ha! That fight sequence was so planned, what weird stances.'

'I wish I could do those moves.'

'His left-side was open, he'd be dead by now if I were fighting him.'

'Action-heroes are awesome!'

'It's all so fake-looking it makes me laugh.'

Between these thoughts though both Naruto and Hinata had a common viewpoint.

Cool or not, action-heroes have nothing on them, they're the real deal.

Afterwards they walked back to his apartment together, holding hands. It was nice, having time for peaceful moments like this imbetween their busy lives as shinobi.

"I guess I'll see you next week Hinata-chan, I have a mission tomorrow morning."

"And mine starts at noon, I'll see you soon." She reached up to kiss him on the lips chastely. Instead of moving back though, she grabbed his cheeks and applied more pressure to his mouth.

"Hinata, what are you-?mmh..." He couldn't speak anymore, they were squished together with him against the outside of his apartment door.

Something was overcoming him, hot and yearning. He combed through her hair and pulled her head even closer, lost in the feel of her lips.

So they'd been dating for a little over a month, barely a day after she arrived back from her long-term shinigami duties they naturally progressed into a relationship. After a failed first-kiss, numerous food-dates, perfect first kiss, fierce and slightly sexual sparring and continued light kisses and innocent-touch moments like hugging and holding hands, there now existed... this.

Passion. Their mouths molded perfectly against eachother and slowly his tongue inched out to touch hers.

Hinata stiffened, feeling the soft wet tongue reach out to her own was weird, but nice. She pushed back a little, eyes wide open even though his were closed. His hands stroked all of her neck while her fingers massaged his scalp. They were both shivering with want.

But all too soon she stopped it, stepping back with her head down shyly.

"Th-that was a promise, of more to come when we see eachother again."

She walked away, but with only a few steps he stopped her again by reaching out to kiss her lightly. "I cant wait Hinata-chan." He hugged her tightly before letting her go, watching her until she turned the corner and sighing heavily against the door with a goofy grin. Maybe it was a little soon to tell her, but Naruto was in love with her. He wasn't ready to say it yet, but sometime soon he would be.

It was a simple re-con mission, though an A-rank considering they were trying to gain intel on the supposed members who were looking to restart the Hidden Mist village. These members were as yet unknown, but to the jounin-duo it would only be a matter of time.

Naruto sat high up in the branches of a tree, using his sharp chakra-sensory skills to detect the signatures of the people below and ahead. There were at most 50 people, some with very low levels indicating they were civillians while others had chuunin to jounin levels. The thick fog cleared very slightly and he caught the outline of buildings and houses, so this more than likely was a village.

"Dobe, word on the layout?"

A voice crackled to life in his ear. Adjusting the small speaker, he pulled the speaker to his mouth and replied in a low voice.

"It's a village, estimate 50 people, 20 chuunin-level and 10 jounin. Perimetre reaches around 20 kilometres, houses to the left and unknown buildings to the right. Should I go in with my clones?"

"Yes, don't attack yet though. This may not be a hostile village."

"Gotcha Teme."

So it was a stealth mission, great. Stealth had never been his specialty, Sasuke was better at it by miles. But Naruto would do better since the fog made it nearly impossible to see, and Sasuke's power relied heavily on his sharingan eyes, if he had to fight he'd be doing so blindly. Naruto however had the advantage of sensing chakra and knew every villager's position, being able to avoid them. He released thirty of his clones who sneaked along the building edges until one of them found what he wanted. The man ahead had the strongest and most chakra in the village and Naruto was willing to bet this guy was the leader.

"This is clone #18, I've found the strongest shinobi they have, his chakra signature is clear from here."

Naruto expelled said clone and headed over to where he'd been.

"I've found him Teme and he's alone, do I engage?"

"Quietly."

The man was pretty easy to take down, but doing so quietly was the hard part. Naruto resisted the urge to scream when said man grabbed his crotch, keeping his arm around the man's neck until he passed out. He was tied up and carried away by two of the shadow clones, while the rest were expelled and the original trailed behind, making sure nothing had been left out of place.

"I'll keep him under hypnosis until we get back to Konoha, Ibiki-san and Anko-san can interrogate him about their village. If all goes well and there's no threat, we drop him back off none the wiser about who took him."

Sasuke's words were met with a nod from Naruto, whose thoughts were already on another matter entirely. They'd been walking for hours now and the fog was beginning to clear. Thankfully, Sasuke stopped them at dusk and they set up camp, the two Naruto clones expelling after they dropped the tied-up man. As soon as their hostage woke up his eyes met Sasuke's sharingan, placing him under a heavy genjutsu that could only be broken out of on his command.

The two best-friends and fellow jounin shared some leftover meat from yesterday's catch over a small fire.

"I hardly ever hang out with you teme, you're always off being lovey-dovey with Sakura..." Naruto said, frowning at the smirk the Uchiha gave him.

"I love her, it cant be helped. And as if you're any better with your Hinata-chan, she's the only thing you ever thought about for a whole year and a half and now she's back you can't stop talking about her!"

Naruto blushed, so even the teme had noticed how preoccupied he'd been after the war with his wistful thoughts. And it was true, he'd talk to Sakura about the best ways to be with Hinata, how to behave and act like proper boyfriend-material. More often than not Sasuke was with him and stayed quiet, or continued training while they took breaks and kept talking.

"Speaking of though, dobe, have you told Hinata-san you loved her?"

"Ummm... no. We've been together barely 2 months, I don't want to scare her away by telling her quickly."

"Hmm. I suppose it's for the best, but if you don't want to say it yet, just show her exactly how much you love her through your actions. And I don't mean sex."

"I know you don't teme! Just, like taking care of her and stuff, yeah I get it..."

He couldn't stop the redness in his face, and Sasuke enjoyed it for all it was worth. Having found a new way he could tease the dobe, he was more than ejoying this.

"So you two haven't done it yet huh? Pro-tip dobe, even if you don't plan on having sex soon carry a condom around anyways, it's a precautionary thing."

"Precaution? What do you mean?"

"Sometimes after a long mission, like this one for instance, me and Sakura do it straight away. It's a heat of the moment, consuming need, we find the first secluded place we can and just go at it."

He pulled out his money-pouch and revealed the condom-package to Naruto, whose eyes widened.

"You two are both turning 19 soon dobe. You're old enough to be doing this and you know it's gonna be soon. I'm just telling you, be careful about it, unless you want to get Hinata pregnant now, effectively ending her jounin career for quite a while and letting her have an illegitemate baby since you two aren't married."

"God teme you're scaring the crap out of me!" Naruto had fallen off his seat at Sasuke's words and picked himself up. All those negative reprecussions ran through his head and he shivered.

"I get your point though, I don't want any of those things... yet. I'll buy some when we get back, but... what if she sees it? Will she think I'm being too forward and expecting sex out of her?"

"I'll get Sakura to explain it to her, but you should tell her too. Don't worry dobe, she's liked you for a long time, and frankly I don't know anyone who seems to know what goes through your head better than Hinata-san. You'll both be fine with this."

"Well I guess, thanks a lot Sasuke."

"Hn."

They arrived back in the village, hostage in tow, a day earlier than planned. After dropping their captive hidden-mist villager off in the underground interrogation facility, Sasuke and Naruto headed to the Hokage's office to report.

"Well, everything seems to be in order." Kakashi stated, his lazy eye travelling between his two former students. They both looked relatively fine, a little roughed up perhaps but only due to the nights sleeping out and lack of provisions.

"Cool, later dobe, Kakashi-sensei." The Uchiha walked out of the office, probably off to find his pink-haired girlfriend at the hospital.

"Kakashi-sensei, any word on Team 8's mission?"

The Hokage eyed him with a look of surprise. "Kurenai's old students? Why so concerned about them?"

"Well, they're my friends..." He scratched the back of his neck nervously, causing Kakashi to lift a concealed eyebrow. "Would this have anything to do with Hinata-san by any chance?"

"It might... I care about her a lot, the others too I guess."

Kakashi chuckled, earning a glare from the blonde shinobi. "Their mission was to track the whereabouts of a group of high-level anbu who went missing recently. They found the location, turns out the anbu were captured by another village. Team Kurenai are heading back now and will probably be here tomorrow evening. That's as far as their updates went, but everything seems to be running smoothly."

"Wow, must've been powerful shinobi to capture anbu." Naruto marvelled, even he couldn't spot the anbu ninja who guarded the village, though he knew their chakras were there it seemed they were invisible in plain-sight.

Kakashi nodded, "it was an A-rank for that reason. You and Sasuke will probably be called for very soon, we need powerful individuals to force their way in if our stealth team finds them."

"Okay, I'll be ready. I'm gonna go relax while I can, later Kakashi-sensei."

"Bye Naruto."

Team 8 didn't arrive the next morning, even though Naruto waited for five hours by the West gates. Okay, so they may have entered through the East or South gates, but he couldn't pick up their chakra traces when he took a jog around and through the entire village.

This meant they hadn't arrived back at the designated time. He was sad, but not too worried. It wasn't uncommon to be late back. With a deep sigh he turned back to the main part of the village. Maybe asking Lee to train with him would keep his mind off of things.

Two days had passed and now everyone was worried. No message had been received and no word spoken of them.

Kakashi sighed, leaning against his hands heavily. The jounin in front of him hadn't left his office since early morning, and it was almost evening now. Naruto sat in the corner, dark bags under his eyes from obvious lack of sleep.

He stared into space, waiting for Kakashi's command to let him go outside the village and start searching for his girlfriend. The day before he'd run himself hoarse yelling at Kakashi to let him go, but the Hokage still refused.

"Please Kakashi-sensei! My friends, Hinata... they could be dying!"

"You know very well she wont be dead Naruto." Kakashi stated.

"She could be! I mean... we don't know for sure that we're invincible..." He took a deep breath, leaning back in his chair. "I can't stop worrying sensei. And Kiba and Shino, they're important to me as well."

"I believe they are more than capable of taking care of themselves, and Hinata-san wouldn't let them die easily Naruto, have some faith."

At these last words a tap at the window sounded. Both men looked over and saw a messenger-bird holding a scroll. Kakashi took the scroll and unravelled it.

"Hmmm..." his eyes moved across the paper quickly, before turning back to the eagerly-anticipating Naruto.

"Mission success. They arrived back ten minutes ago, heavily injured but alive and in the hospital."

"YAHOOO!" The blonde's crow could be heard within a kilometre radius. "Later sensei!" Naruto was about to leave when the Hokage called him back. "I have more news." he stated simply, continuing to read the document. "Not only did they locate the missing anbu, they retrieved them as well."

"Well that's even better isn't it?" Naruto asked. His grin went slightly lopsided at the serious expression on Kakashi's face.

"I need you to send a message to Team Kurenai. Tell them that they're being suspended from their duties as shinobi, for an unknown amount of time."

Naruto took in the scene before him. Two of the three hospital beds in the room were occupied while the third had messy, shifted covers. Hinata was sitting on the window sill, wrapped in an arm-cast, several bloody bandages down her legs and a guilty expression on her face.

Though she looked pretty beat up, it was nothing compared to Kiba and Shino. While Shino was wrapped from the neck down completely in bandages, straight as a plank with his arms at his sides, Kiba was barely discernible, only by Akamaru at his side could Naruto tell that the bruised and bloody mess was the Inuzuka.

Sakura and Shizune worked on one each of them, quietly using their chakra to heal the worst of the damages, and both Seiko and Tenten were presently holding their respective boyfriend's hands with identical pained expressions.

He crossed the distance between him and his girlfriend and pulled her into a warm embrace, which she accepted quietly. "What happened?" He asked in a low voice, so as not to disturb the sleeping Kiba and Shino.

She took a deep breath, exhaling shakily.

"We found the three anbu who'd gone missing in a cave, tied up. They looked like shit honestly, they're in critical condition now with Tsunade-sama and a whole team getting extensive surgery before they can be healed."

"Kakashi told me a bit about what happened. Why'd you go back Hinata-chan?"

"Because... one of the anbu was just a trainee, my sister Hanabi."

She buried her head into his chest. "They raped her and the other female anbu, and beat the lot of them half to death. I couldn't leave them."

Naruto immediately felt anger rising in his chest. He didn't know Hanabi well, but the thought of his girlfriend's sister getting hurt in such a way sickened him. If that were to happen to Hinata, he'd tear the bastards to shreds. He understood Hinata's actions, but was still angry she put herself in that kind of extreme danger, though he kept these thoughts silent.

"I wanted Shino and Kiba to go back and warn the Hokage because they'd be risking their lives, these guys were powerful."

"But I'm guessing they followed you anyway." Hinata nodded, wiping her tears away with the back of her sleeve. "I'm glad they're alive, my sister and the others wouldn't have gotten out without them."

"Hinata-chan, everything's alright now." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Kakashi-sensei told me to say you three are going to take a break once you're out of the hospital. I didn't understand why at first, but I think now it's because you guys might have gone through a lot of trauma."

"It actually was traumatic, fuck... I killed a lot of them..."

"With good reason."

She nodded, eyes dried up quite a bit. "Naruto-kun, I know I promised you some stuff last time we met but could we hold that off until..."

She didn't know how long exactly, but he nodded. "I understand Hinata-chan, I'm not going to force anything to happen, especially after this."

"O-okay, thanks a lot."

Her teammates woke up after a couple of hours and Naruto greeted them brightly. After another half-hour of keeping the mood cheery, he left Hinata, Tenten and Seiko in the hospital room to be with Shino and Kiba and went home. It was almost 11pm and he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

The next morning in the hospital, he found the addition of Hinata's sister in the three-person team's room. Aside from a haunted look in her eyes and even paler than usual complexion, she wasn't too bad off. Right after the all-night healing process Ino had been called in to seal off most of the memories of her captivity. It left her a little clueless about what happened, but Tsunade said she would've been ten times worse with her memory fully intact.

Naruto sat with Hinata quietly, watching the day pass as all of their friends and Hiashi came in at some point as visitors.

"Naruto-kun..." Hinata started, noticing his dazed expression.

"Uhmph, Hinata-chan, what's up?"

"Sakura just told me I'll be okay to go in a little bit."

"Okay, cool!"

"I'm pretty hungry, wanna get ramen when I check out?"

Instead of the usual over-enthusiastic response, Naruto remained mindful of the visitors and smiled softly. "I'd love to."

Months passed in the busy lives of the two jounin, and it seemed an era of peace had truly descended on the village. The biggest villages in each of the five countries came to an agreement and a peace treaty was signed between everyone. No apparent threats loomed, but that didn't stop shinobi from keeping their guard up.

"Hey, a new jutsu!" Naruto shouted in excitement, his eyes gleaming off the power his sparring partner emitted. The indigo-haired girl grinned back, "nope, it's a rehash of my flaming jyuken, but with water this time." Her fists and feet were a blur beneath swirling water, each limb completely encompassed with liquid.

She used these to shoot long spouts of water that seemed to form into huge dragons made up of either normal, boiling-hot or icy-cold liquid.

"Okay so maybe the dragon part's new..." Hinata admitted, shrugging. Naruto's grin turned into a smirk, "you're not the only one who's learnt some new tricks..." he pulled out his new weapons, strange black arm-braces with swirling red fox designs and holes at the knuckles. Jiraiya had given these to him for his birthday, they contained huge reserves of the kyuubi's chakra and only worked for him.

"Blood-claws..." Hinata gazed in awe as he put a little bit of his chakra into the braces and immediately giant red claws curved out from the knuckle holes making him look a bit like a wolverine. He attacked the ice dragon first, segmenting it with the razor sharp blades.

"I'd better get my weapon out too..." Hinata pulled out her simple looking chakra-infused katana, well-worn but still in good condition considering it was 30 years old and once belonged to her mother, and prepared for a long battle.

What seemed like hours later, they were both lying on the ground next to eachother, panting. There hadn't been any injuries this time, neither had been able to land a single blow on the other. Naruto struggled to stand up, his sore limbs straining more under the extra weight of the imbetween world Hinata had sent them to. He'd opted to go shirtless to shed some of the gravity, his black knee-length shorts tightly buckled around his waist.

Lean but well-defined muscles outlined his arms and chest along with a hard stomach mostly covered by the kyuubi's seal that glowed dark red. The seal was usually invisible, but with the amount of fighting they'd done he'd had to draw on more of Kurama's chakra.

He crawled over to where his girlfriend lay, straining with every movement until his forehead touched hers and their warm panting breaths intermingled with eachother.

"That was fucking amazing!" He stated, huge grin meeting the small smile she had.

"It was great. I was having trouble keeping up that time." She couldn't help it, immortal didn't mean relentless and his stamina was legendary.

"You too huh, I could probably go another round, in like... an hour."

Hinata giggled and rolled onto her stomach, stretching langurously so her shoulders popped. "This sparring gets pretty intense, is it anything like this when you fight Sasuke or the others?"

"Nowhere near." Naruto rolled onto his back, hands behind his head, eyes wandering lazily down the perfectly curvaceous and well-toned figure of the girl next to him. Her hair was tied in a messy bun, revealing the usually hidden parts of her back. Across this smooth skin a dark blue seal was scrawled, glowing slightly. It was the seal that kept her shinigami-form hidden and held her wings back until she needed them.

"Hmmm... same." She tucked her arms under her head and faced him, still smiling. Their eyes met and gazes held, his left hand moving up of its own accord so the rough fingers could trail lazily across her bare skin, making her shiver.

Even though Hinata was dirty and sweating profusely, she was still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. The same could be said from the girl, as she gazed at his big blue eyes that held nothing but warm, undulated affection.

"Hinata?"

"Naruto."

"... nothing..."

Hinata furrowed her brow slightly.

"... okay..."

Mentally the boy palmed himself for not taking that moment to tell her. "Actually, I did have something to say, I was just being stupid."

Hinata ignored the jibe he took at himself and shrugged. "What is it?"

"Well we've been dating for almost a year now and in that time I've thought about exactly how I feel about you. Actually, I'm pretty sure I knew I loved you way before we started dating, I've just never been able to admit it before now. I think I'm rambling, but anyway I just wanted to say... I... I love you Hinata!"

There were a few moments of silence as he looked into her eyes with worry. That feeling however, quickly melted away when he saw how warm her eyes were. Without even a hint of reluctance or second-thought she returned his expression.

"I love you too Naruto."

And she kissed him on the nose, and then the cheek, before his own lips turned to capture hers in something warm and chaste, though it didn't take long to heat up.

Naruto felt light and giddy on the way back to his apartment. Over the last 9 months they actually hadn't had as much time to spend together as he would've liked. He was swamped with paperwork thanks to his growing duties as the next successor to the Hokage, and had also had to take some time out to instruct some of the academy students on ninjutsu.

Since the war and loss of many of Konoha's finest shinobi, things were still a little hectic for genin-hopefuls, teams were changed around so that the higher-ranks were freed to do more missions and secure the village while it was still vulnerable, and he and most of his friends were called in to help instruct gennin and students.

Hinata had avoided this duty, because recently she'd gone into the anbu and was finishing up the last of her apprenticeship, under Yamato no less. He'd deemed her ready after only 7 months of training, and she was now going to be part of the Hokage's personal guard with the occasional A or S-rank mission. Naruto decided when he fully became Hokage she was going to be at his side as often as possible by requesting she be his personal guard when the time came.


	5. Endless Depths of Blissful Agony

Smut warning! You're welcome in advance though ;)

Nevertheless they would meet and spend time together almost every free moment they had. It was a common topic amongst the villagers that the Hokage's successor was dating the revived Hyuuga ex-heiress.

Still not as hot a topic as that floating land with the picturesque house on top though, it moved around the walls of the village and disappeared completely at times! Decidedly only a very powerful shinobi could own that thing, and since Hinata was really powerful no real discussion was had other than comments of admiration.

Digression aside, the young couple had been busy but usually managed to get a couple of dates and a training session in once a month. The entire group of friends and themselves, or variant large groups of said people, would meet up and eat lunch together, usually at Ichiraku's. There they would catch up and socialise, keeping steadfast to the bonds they'd made with their comrades and closest friends.

Naruto felt he was at the highest point of happiness in his life so far. He was steadily making his way to Hokage, on this projected path he'd get it before he turned 25.

He was best-friends with a much warmer though still snarky, returned Sasuke Uchiha and the very, very strong pink-haired top medical-nin kunoichi Sakura Haruno, who'd taken over Tsunade baa-chan's position after she decided to settle down for a quiet life in the village with Jiraiya at her side and Shizune pouring her sake-laced tea while minding the hospital. All of his friends were at least jounin level and had their own high positions of authority in the village and busy lives as well.

He had the respect and love of the whole village, and he had those things from Hinata-chan, his equal in every way and the single most important person in his life. She was everything he'd dreamed of and more, and he'd never let what they had, or her, go. Ever.

That last bit sounded a little posessive. But he was only talking to himself, so what did it matter? Especially glad that Kurama had merged into his being so the demonic voice no longer interrupted his thoughts, Naruto pulled himself out of his thoughts and back to the present matter, or person.

His beautiful girlfriend came over to cook for him, and afterwards would maybe give him a greatly-needed massage and fool around a bit. The spars against Lee and Kiba combined were nothing short of brutal, though they still had nothing on Hina-chan.

Speaking of Hina-chan... Naruto eyed the back of his girlfriend busily moving around in the kitchen of his new spacious two-bedroom ensuite apartment with a large balcony and everything he needed and more (a gift from the villagers and his friends) and smiled goofily. In a second he cleared the space between them and wrapped his arms around her waist. "I love you Hina-chaaan!"

Gah! He was so cute when he did this Hinata couldn't help but blush profusely. She didn't squeal like the first times he did it because it really was a common occurrence; getting jumped by her boyfriend. He only did it when they were alone together so she didn't mind (because PDA was a very big no-no in Hinata's book) and it was his way of displaying affection, however stealthily he had to be to surprise her.

Plus it made her feel special and loved, chasing away any fears or doubts she had about his feelings for her. Naruto adamantly told Hinata how much he loved her and just as much how beautiful or pretty she looked every time he saw her.

Definitely no complaints from her, although those roaming hands creeping up from her waist as they so often did nowadays showing his 'displays of affection' were definitely showing something in the more intimate sense.

He stroked her sides carefully, watching the elicited response of an approving hum from her before leaning his chin into the crook of her neck and sighing contentedly.

"These are my favourite moments of the day, coming home to you... and food..." He chuckled lightly at her small pout and breathed in her scent, vanilla, cinnamon, lavender and something else that was all her.

One day soon he'd breathe that scent in every morning when he woke up with her in his arms.

"So why aren't we living together already?"

Hinata groaned in response turning to face him. She ran her hands along his chest before pushing him away playfully.

"We have stuff at eachother's places, and I stay at yours like 3 nights a week so that's pretty much living together. I guess I still like having my own space, deal with it."

"Hmph. I'll wear you down eventually Hyuuga, believe it!"

Aah, the playful last-name exchange that only came out when they challenged eachother. Naruto gave that steely glint gaze that made her shiver, but Hinata returned it with a coy smile.

"Feh, what am I going to do when you threaten me so Uzumaki? maybe I should just run away again- "

He grabbed her around the waist, a little more forcefully than before but still playful. "Oh no you don't Hyuuga! Running from the Hokage is a grave offence..."

"Then I'd better go apologize to him." Hinata body-flickered with a comical expression and he swore loudly, taking off in pursuit.

It was more of a jacked-up version of catch-and-kiss for the two, one that Naruto seemed to enjoy more since Hinata allowed him to do as he wished if she didn't reach the designated point before he caught her.

Catching her was of course very, very difficult. She'd won more times, but he could claim a larger prize.

The Hokage Tower was in sight and hardly a minute passed since she'd left the apartment. Her body almost parallel with the ground far below, the girl made one last giant leap for the tower and was inches away from the wall of it when...

She found herself flat on her back in the apartment again. Her dazed eyes took in the sight of a jeering Naruto on top of her, smirking like a predator who'd caught their prey.

"I win! Time for my prize Hina-chan..." he said. His hands moved down the length of her arms all the way to her fingertips before he laced his fingers into hers and brought her hands above her head.

"You figured out your dad's jutsu didn't you?" she stated, smirking just as widely as him and simply kissing him when he nodded. "I'm proud of you Naruto-kun, now if you'll just let me finish cooking dinner..."

"I turned the stove off for now, we have more important business ne, Hina-hime?"

Hime eh? Hinata gulped a little in anticipation of what he was going to do. Funny how Naruto liked making it a challenge even if she started it. Well, he was never one to turn down hard work.

And work hard he did.

Hinata closed her eyes and felt the sensation of his hands roaming across her body, tugging against the zipper of her jacket and eventually pulling the garment off of her.

There. Easier access to the mesh-covered limbs beneath.

His eyes gazed over her curves and ample bosom hungrily before he dived into her neck to nuzzle there, kissing the skin around her pulse-point lightly.

Hinata couldn't help but moan softly as his hands moved to her still-covered chest before massaging and squeezing her breasts. Thanks to her encouragement over the last three months he'd gotten very brave with his touching, actually they'd both explored almost everything they could above the waist.

This slow, sensual pace was extremely satisfying for Hinata, she needed the time to get used to him before they got to sex and he was very understanding about it.

"H-hey... Naruto-kun?"

Said boy stopped groping his girlfriend and looked up with a longing expression. "Hmm?"

"Your time is up."

She grinned and poked a tongue out at him, as he moaned in protest but begrudgingly got off her and stood up.

"I guess it is, until next time then..." he kissed her once more and let her hurry back into the kitchen, but she paused at the bench-top, leaning on it and looking back towards him.

"You know Naruto-kun, we keep going further with... well, with THAT. I think it'd be okay if we started, you know, having sex."

"Well... I like doing stuff with you Hina-chan. I mean, I REALLY like doing stuff with you. But to be honest... I wanted to hold off on sex... until..."

"Until when?" she asked, eyebrows drawn together in puzzlement.

"Until... until I married you!" He finally admitted, scratching the back of his head.

"Look... my dad didn't marry my mom until after she was pregnant with me and they both died before anything could really be done, but they told me it was one of their biggest regrets that we were never a truly legitemate family in the eyes of Kami. I want to make sure everything we do together is... okay. You mean too much to me for me not to take you seriously Hina-chan, I'm going to do it all the right way by marrying you first. Of course, afterwards..." He waggled his eyebrows at her and they both laughed.

"So why don't we?" Hinata asked later, sitting at the dining table with her boyfriend and the remains of dinner surrounding them.

"What?" he asked, leaning back with a full belly and sigh of content.

"Why don't we get married? We'll both be 20 by the end of the year, and even if that's a little young it's just a formality, I don't know about you but I don't plan on having kids any time soon..."

"But they'd be cute little blue-tinted byakugan using monsters!"

"Agh, I'm not ready to be a parent. I want you to myself as much as possible for now." she stated this with that heated gaze he knew and loved.

"Well... okay, but let me propose to you in a special way, preferably in public with a ring."

"If you insist on the whole public declaration of our love thing, fine." Hinata rolled her eyes and kissed him lightly. "Wedding rings are a pretty foreign custom..."

"Yeah, Kirabi-sensei told me about them and I think the symbolism behind them is very meaningful..." currently Naruto tugged at the gem around his neck. It was the jewel Tsunade baa-chan gave him that he planned on fashioning into a ring for her.

"Let me get you a ring, if you're getting mine..." she decided. After his refusal at said request she simply insisted and kissed him senselessly until he was worn down into acceptance.

Another few months passed and with it both of their 20th birthdays. While Naruto was busy on his escort mission, trying to save up enough to pay a suitable blacksmith to fashion his gem into a ring while still being able to pay his regular bills, Hinata went about things a slightly different way, though a mission was still involved.

She perched at the top of a giant volcano overlooking the fiery chaos of what most thought was hell. Demons scrabbled across the lower recesses of a molten floor and dark rock, cackling madly while scaly gargoyles chased them into hiding. It was nothing but burning and the dank smell of death, but it wasn't hell, not by a longshot.

This was simply another dimension some wandering traveller had come across at one point in history and taken stories of back to her home, such that she'd heard of this place long before finding it.

With a clear goal in mind, Shinigami-form Hinata dove into the fiery depths of 'Hell' and weaved herself between creatures, looking for the fiery feathertips of a special bird. It took hours to find her, but Hou-ou, queen of the phoenixes, was probably the largest thing in this world and so spotting her from miles off wasn't hard.

"Who goes there? Oh, a shinigami..." the voice sounded like that of a regal queen, filled with the warmth that a burning fire could provide but still professional. Hinata felt insignificant compared to her, both in size and in the way a true queen held herself compared to the ex-heiress.

"You have come a long way young one, state your purpose for coming to see me."

Trust a phoenix queen to already be in control of this uncalled for situation and cutting straight to the point. Hinata bowed deeply, clearing her throat.

"Hou-ou sama, queen of phoenixes. I seek to find a rare power that I may give as a gift to my beloved, and in return I can grant you freedom from this wretched place."

"Oh?" The phoenix was intrigued, scraping a six-foot long talon across the floor of the cliffside she stood atop. As a shinigami it would indeed be within the girl's power to grant such a wish. But this deal seemed very suspicious still.

"I wish for you sit with me shinigami-san, and tell me your story leading up to your request of me. Fair warning, you should never lie to a phoenix, we can detect all forms of deceit..."

"That is fine Hou-ou sama. I just ask that you spare me enough of your time, for it is a long story."

The phoenix nodded and settled next to the young woman as she began from the very beginning. It was long and detailed, taking almost an hour to retell to the flaming bird. Hinata finally recounted the last part, where she reiterated why she wanted the power that Hou-ou held.

"By storing some of your flame chakra into a ring, I hope to give Naruto-kun something reminiscent of the will of fire that we in Konoha uphold dearly. It already burns brightly in his heart, but this is a special way from me to him of reminding him that it's there."

Plus, it would look really cool and he'd totally wear it all the time...

It didn't take a lot more to convince Hou-ou, so she nodded and stood up again, ready to take flight.

"Transport me back to my original world of the phoenixes, and I will grant you one of my feathers, which should give you more than enough of the power you seek."

They took flight into the air, continually ascending until Hinata was forced to rip through space and land in another world, that of the phoenixes. It was a quick and brief exchange of farewells before the phoenix flew off into the distance, leaving behind a single, flaming feather almost the length of her forearm.

Hinata smiled to herself, flying back to her home clutching the feather tightly. She would need to extract its power and store it in a ring, which was going to take a seal of some sort. That would be the hardest part.

This was all a whole lot of effort for something as simple as wedding rings. But neither Naruto and Hinata could imagine doing it any other way, as they set off on their seperate missions to prepare said rings.

A month passed by, and with it many events occurred simultaneously through complete coincidence. Firstly was Hanabi's coronation as clan-head. She would now officially be working under Hiashi as successor to his title for the next three years until her 18th birthday.

Almost 50 at this time, Hiashi wanted nothing more than to hand over his position to the younger generation, so he could free up more of his time for more diplomatic duties such as travelling to other villages and helping Konoha forge much-needed alliances.

It was the clan-head's duty to stay inside the compound, protecting it while also keeping peace between the members. Without said title, his presence would no longer be as necessary, though he would still be around often during Hanabi's early stages as head.

There would also be a lot of changes once his younger daughter took over, most likely involving reinstating Hinata's position in the clan and modifying the caged-bird seal. There was no need to repeat the incident with Neji's seal, ever.

Secondly was Sasuke and Sakura's being engaged. Every one of their friends were gobsmacked when they announced it during the weekly lunch meeting, but they were all happy for their two friends, especially with the radiant smile Sakura gave and Sasuke's small but warm half-smirk. For Naruto and Hinata it meant a sigh of frustration, so much for announcing their plans so soon...

The next week was Shino and Seiko's news of their engagement, another big surprise because it barely even looked like they were dating. They acted more like cool acquaintances after all, even if they never left eachother's side in public save for seperate missions.

Kurenai-sensei had become a teacher at the academy alongside Iruka-sensei who'd been promoted to jounin. Speaking of Iruka-sensei, last week Naruto spotted his older-brother figure more than in the presence of his older-sister figure Ayame-chan, it looked like the two were on a date.

Later, gossip from Ino revealed they were in a pretty serious relationship, it was about time Iruka settled down anyways thought Naruto, he was in his 30's now and Ayame wasn't far behind him.

Speaking of sensei's and dating, Iruka's and Jiraiya's partners may not have been surprising, but Kakashi-sensei's...

Hinata spotted the silver-haired man from outside her home. Naked as the day he was born save for his face-mask, the man was seen running for his life from a snake about thirty feet long and a foot and a half wide screaming at the top of his lungs something about orange books and not burning them please.

She also saw him more than once paying for dango and carrying it to a secluded table where none-other than the smirking Anko Mitarashi sat.

It was the strangest combination, yet the one that made the most perfect sense. Anko was cruel, sadistic and prone to violence with the occasional sweet moments and really enjoyed flaunting her promiscuity with her scantily-clad form.

Kakashi was dutifully late, somewhat crazy, enjoyed torture and suffering more than he let on, and also a closet-pervert. Their marriage a week into dating was a result of eight bottles of sake and a lost bet by him.

So much happening and yet they still managed to not drift apart. The whirlwind of their lives only made Naruto and Hinata cling more to eachother as their passionate encounters grew into something so heated neither could take it anymore.

The couple was enjoying a nice restaurant dinner at none other than the biggest restaurant Choji's family owned. Said Akamichi happened to be there with his girlfriend that night, a few tables down...

Kiba and Tenten were also present, having successfully kept a relationship for over a year now that was full of explosive energy and loud laughter.

Naruto looked around the room, noting the dimmed lights and romantic scenery before he caught the bright eyes of his girlfriend.

"Hey Hina-chan, you wanna get some air on the balcony?"

"Sure Naru-kun." He stood up and reached a hand out for her to take, once again admiring the beautiful lavender silk dress that clung to her torso and fluttered down to her knees, modestly covering her top though the outline left little to his imagination. She put her hair up in an elegant bun and her smooth skin glowed under the candle lighting.

He himself actually wore a dark dinner jacket and dress pants to the occasion, with an orange shirt and bowtie because hey, he was still Uzumaki Naruto, and his usually wild blonde hair combed enough to fall over his forehead and sides handsomely.

The couple stood close-together, his arm across her shoulders, taking in the view.

"It's so pretty tonight, all of the stars..." Hinata marvelled at the perfectly twinkling sky, overwhelming joy taking over her. Turning back to her partner, she was surprised to find him kneeling on one knee in front of her.

"Heh, Kirabi-sensei told me to do it this way..." he said with a shy smile. She was still confused though, at least until he pulled out the object hidden in his pocket and slipped it on her finger.

Hinata bought her hand up, eyes widening as she saw the ring. It was made up of most of the blue-green crystal that usually hung around his neck, molded into shape with tiny, intricate designs circling the outside.

"I wrote the kanji for 'forever' on the inside, because that's how long I hope we can have together. Hinata-chan, will you marry me?" His big blue eyes were earnest, one hand snaking up to hold hers.

She felt really faint. This was really happening, even though they'd talked about it months ago he'd finally gone and asked. Oh Kami...

"Yes, absolutely Naru-kun." She smiled warmly as tears welled up in her eyes, but she kept them in and hugged him.

Naruto for the life of him couldn't breathe in after her answer. He always knew she wouldn't say no, but to think this moment could go so perfectly...

'She... said yes.'

'She wants to marry me.'

'I'm going to marry Hina-chan!'

"WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!" He yelled this off the balcony at the top of his lungs before giving off a howl so loud it woke up the early sleepers in their homes miles away and dogs on the other side of town were barking. Hinata had her hands over her ears laughing. He bounded back to her and lifted her up, twirling her around until they were both dizzy.

The balcony doors slid open and Kiba ran out, Tenten close behind followed by half the restaurant. "What the hell! What happened Hinata?" he asked, looking with confusion between the softly smiling Hinata and the goofily grinning blonde currently glomping her. "Everything's fine Kiba-kun, he's just really happy I said yes..."

"Yes to what?"

Tenten nudged him from the side, also grinning. "Didn't you hear Naruto's screaming? They're engaged now."

As if that was the signal, Naruto snapped out of his blissful daze and made a familiar handsign.

"Kage bushiin!"

Dozens of shadow-clones were sent spilling off the edge of the building, screaming the news at the top of their lungs.

"Everyone needs to be informed, the soon-to-be Hokage is getting married! And it's gonna be the biggest party of the year!" Naruto exclaimed, hugging his girlfriend from behind while she blushed heavily after finally realising how much attention he'd attracted.

"This year Naru-kun?" she teased later when they were alone at her home. He was still in his impenetrably happy stupor, sitting down on the porch with a cup of tea in hand, hair messy again, shirt half unbuttoned and tie tossed to the side.

"Well, yeah... is that too soon for you?" he mumbled nervously, wondering if he'd pushed her too far. He looked over to his fiancé, noting how relaxed she was away from the multiple eyes of scrutiny. Most of her hair cascaded down from the elegant bun curling in tendrils around her face and neck, and with her bare feet poking out from the silky dress and her baggy violet jacket on to ward off the slight chill, she was the epitome of natural beauty in his eyes.

Hinata placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly and shook her head. "It's fine with me, though no doubt my father will try to plan the occasion and with less than four months until the end of the year he'll let the stress get to him."

"It's not his wedding though!"

She shrugged, "parents are weird about these things, even Ayame nee-san will get in on this and I'd put money on it that Tsunade-sama, your proclaimed godmother, is fighting my father right now over who's going to be in control."

Eerily enough the prolonged yell of someone getting thrown far out of a window reached the couple's ears. Naruto nodded in understanding, deciding then it would be best to leave the planning to whoever won that fight. As long as he could invite all of his friends, there was ramen made especially by old-man Teuchi and of course, his fiancè was there.

Naruto smiled inwardly, thinking to himself how wonderful and grand such an event was going to be, with every one of his precious people there to celebrate his happiness.

Sakura stepped into her apartment, breathing in a huge sigh of relief after the extremely gruelling day she'd just had at the hospital. She'd had to deal with three burn-victims and one poisoned today, all critical-condition cases after a mission gone wrong. The saddest part was she knew the patients, and victim because one of them hadn't pulled through.

They were shinobi, chuunin only four years younger than her who she'd occasionally seen running around the hospital on D-ranks during their gennin days. The death of Kishin, their team-medic who'd been blasted while healing her teammates, tore her up inside. Kishin reminded her too much of herself, and the dangers medics as well as all shinobi faced.

After a quick shower she changed into her comfortable home clothes and tied her hair back in pigtails, sifting through the fridge for snacks. Familiar cool hands sneaked under shirt and wrapped around her waist and she smiled.

"Did I wake you up?"

"Hn, with such a racket how couldn't you?"

Sakura turned around and nuzzled into her boyfriend and now fiancé's neck, breathing in the warm scent of his sleepy body. "Sorry, I'll be quieter next time. Join me for a midnight snack?"

Sasuke quietly hummed in agreement and pulled out from the oven the rice and fried fish he'd saved her, with fried eggs and tomato relish since he'd always been a fan of tomatoes. Grabbing chopsticks, glasses and milk Sakura took the seat across from him and dug into dinner.

Sasuke had surprisingly sought out cooking-lessons from a familiar Hyuuga as well as gardening tips. Now not only could he cook, thanks to Hinata's detailed written instructions for making simple but delicious and quick meals, he'd also started a garden on the balcony that saved them having to buy tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and any flavouring herbs.

Their apartment was rather spacious, with cool neutral-coloured walls in shades of beige or light-grey and all the utilities needed. There was a single large bedroom, a bathroom with a sunken bath-tub they'd shared on more than one occasion and plenty of big windows to let in as much light as possible.

Being high-ranking shinobi in the village with important jobs meant they both brought in good incomes. Even enough to afford a house, though this place more than sufficed.

The downside for Sakura was the 12 hour shifts, with only Sundays off, as the sick and dying required all of her expertise and most of the time she wished she could dedicate to the man she loved. For Sasuke it was being away from the village weeks on end with A or S-rank missions that put his life on the line constantly, uncertainty growing on whether or not he would make it back home and into the waiting arms of the woman he loved. The two ate in companiable silence despite their fears, Sasuke picking at her plate since it was piled with food.

Midnight feasts were a nightly occurence when the only other time they saw eachother was during her lunchbreaks or the very rare day off they had together. Afterwards Sakura yawned widely, dumping the dishes in the sink and crawling back to the bathroom to brush her teeth at 1:23am.

Luckily tomorrow was a noon shift.

"So, did you get the dobe's message?" Sasuke asked as they lay in bed, wrapped in eachothers arms. Sakura hummed a yes as she trailed her fingers across his bare chest, "Yeah, his clones woke up most of the hospital but I punched them into nonexistence before I could get out any of the details."

Trust his Sakura to do that, Sasuke chuckled and slipped one of his hands under her shirt again, kneading the soft pinkish skin until she almost moaned in satisfaction. "Their wedding will be sometime before the end of the year. I think the dobe really took that talk I had with him to heart, because he told me later that he wasn't getting in her bed until they made their vows."

"Wow, that's noble of him." Sakura pulled herself up to his head and licked at his lips, seeking entrance for the hot makeout session to come. After a few minutes of this though, she pulled her head back with a frown. "Hey, how come you didn't propose to me until after we had sex and started living together? You thought I was easy didn't you?"

"No, of course not." Sasuke did his best to salvage the situation as she started to shift away, capturing her lips again but making sure to keep his eyes on her in that way he knew she went crazy over. "Our story started off differently, with me being a complete asshole to you and later on realising my mistakes. After the war I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to making everything up to you, it doesn't matter what order our relationship goes in because I love you and everything I do will only ever be with you."

A relieved sigh escaped his lips as her anger dissipated and she returned to trying to pull her shirt off. "Our stories aren't that different, Naruto was completely oblivious to the poor girl's feelings until a few years ago just like you ignored mine."

"Well, if he feels even half the regret and longing for her as I do for you, then he loves her now and they'll be fine."

"Hmm... you're right. But I think next Sunday I'll invite her and the girls over for a small party. I'll be lonely when you go on your mission."

"I wish we had more time together too. But..." he stroked her cheek gently with one hand and expertly unclipped her bra with the other, "having these precious moments few and far between makes us appreciate them more, right?"

She gave out a low moan as he suckled one of her breasts, her fingers raking through his dark locks and tugging them so he faced her again. Her pretty pink nipples hardened and she slid a hand down to his growing erection, grinding against the brief material that covered it.

God she loved this man. He continued giving her all of the attention with her hands and mouth gently massaging her breasts, neck and face, before he placed himself between her legs. As much as she wanted to pleasure him as well, he swatted away her hands and pulled her shorts and panties down slowly, making sure to massage her thighs as well.

"You don't have to, I can..."

Her breath hitched and she sat up as his tongue darted inside her, making her completely forget everything she'd been about to say. Sasuke knew how stressful her job was and always made sure to tend to her needs first. He enjoyed the long drawn-out moans and pleasure-filled cries of ecstasy as Sakura screamed his name over and over before she came.

"Fuck Sasuke, yes! Oh god it's... I love you!" Her hips buckled as the tightly sprung coil of tension within her finally broke and she reached orgasm. Wave after wave rocked her body but she barely had time to register this before a condom packet was put in her trembling hands.

"My turn..." Sasuke whispered eagerly, straddling her hips and allowing her to swiftly unpackage and place said thing on his rock-hard member. Her inner walls were still clenched post-orgasm and he groaned as he pushed himself inside her, feeling everything with the hypersensitive nerves of that part of his anatomy but meeting little resistance thanks to her wonderfully lubricated entrance.

She nipped and sucked at his neck and chest, hands running down his pale, scarred back all the way to his buttocks. He felt her hips bear down to meet him so they were hitting eachother with double the thrust and couldn't help the low guttural moan of pleasure when she whispered in his ear after ten minutes of relentless thrusting.

"Sasuke baby... come for me, please..."

"Sakura... I... fucking... love... you... mmh!"

He met his release hard and fast, slumping over her shoulder and riding out the rest of it by spasmically thrusting into her. Sighing, he rolled onto the bed and pulled her close, marvelling at the way this beauty unravelled him.

They lay back and caught their breath for a few minutes, before she pulled the blanket over them and they snuggled, revelling in post-coital bliss.

Author's notes:

I've written this entire story out to (my) completion, and it's been on file for a long time actually. I needed to clear space on my drive... and couldn't bring myself to publish such M-rated content... until now.

Once again, you're welcome.


End file.
